Rembrandt Research Project

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The man with the gold helmet , attributed to the Rembrandt circle, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

The Rembrandt Research Project in Amsterdam consists of a group of scientists who have been investigating Rembrandt van Rijn's works for authenticity and authenticity since 1968 . The works attributed to Rembrandt included many that had been made by students and employees in his workshop and some of them sold under his name. The investigations of the Rembrandt Research Project led to some, sometimes spectacular, write-offs of paintings previously known as Rembrandt's work. In this context, the project also met with criticism and opposition. In addition to the authenticity test, the project has provided further information on Rembrandt's work and his works.

History and problem

Determining the authorship of Rembrandt's works was already difficult for his contemporaries, as they are sometimes difficult to distinguish from those of other artists such as Govaert Flinck , Jan Lievens or Arent de Gelder . In addition, copies and variants were made in the workshop, so that, for example, ten versions of Repentant Jude are known that cannot be clearly assigned to a specific artist. In some cases, archival documents , literary mentions or reproduction engravings can be used to determine the author, but this is not particularly reliable. In addition, there are scientific studies of the works and the knowledge of specific quality and style characteristics of the artist, according to which matches and deviations can be determined in comparison with undocumented works. However, they are subject to subjective aspects. At the beginning of the 20th century, an optimistic ascription practice was still widespread, which broadly defined the stylistic characteristics for evaluating a painting as an autograph work by Rembrandt.

Structure of the Rembrandt Research Project and its work

The Rembrandt Research Project has an interdisciplinary structure and brings together the findings of the various scientists in respective publications. Members of the project included Josua Bruyn , Bob Haak , Simon H. Levie , Pieter van Thiel and Ernst van de Wetering . The first four named withdrew from the project, so that van de Wetering remained as a leading figure in the project.

The project assesses the images attributed to Rembrandt for their authenticity. They divided the works into three categories: Category A includes paintings whose authorship is confirmed by Rembrandt, Category B, those whose authorship Rembrandt's authorship is not certain, but cannot be denied, and Category C includes works whose authorship Rembrandt's not confirmed and which can be assigned to its area. The assignment of some works to the respective category has not been undisputed. Thus, in 1982 of the three pictures painted on gilded copper plates, Laughing Soldier from the Mauritshuis , Praying Old Woman from the Residence Gallery and a self-portrait from the Swedish National Museum , all of which have a similar small format, with the Praying Old Woman only the most perfectly painted picture as explained authentically. In the catalog of the exhibition The Young Rembrandt. Riddles around its beginnings , which could be seen in 2001 in Amsterdam and Kassel, but the other two pictures were also counted as the sure core of the authentic works from Rembrandt's work from 1627 to 1629. There is this ambiguity in some works. Ernst van de Wetering, for example, refrained from some of his early write-offs and re-assigned works to the circle of authentic paintings.

The Rembrandt Research Project reduced the number of Rembrandt's authentic works to around 350 and published its research results in five catalogs so far. One of the most prominent depreciations is the portrait of The Man with the Gold Helmet in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie . It has not been reassigned with certainty, but there is a hypothesis that it was made by the Augsburg painter Johann Ulrich Mayr , who temporarily worked in Rembrandt's workshop, as the helmet came from an Augsburg armory. In addition, there is the hypothesis that the author of this portrait is not to be found in the workshop, but in Rembrandt's wider area. The drawings were also affected by large amounts of write-offs, while the etchings were largely exempt from school works and imitations.

In addition to the question of the authenticity of Rembrandt's works, the Rembrandt Research Project also has new insights into the workshop and teaching of Rembrandt and archive finds on the artist's biography, models and early provenances of his works. It has also compiled a great deal of scientific knowledge about Rembrandt's works in a database, such as the pigments, binders and painting grounds used. In addition, many indications about the painting process were obtained with X-rays and neutron autoradiography.

Publications

The Rembrandt Research Project has published as editor:

  • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Volume I: 1625-1631. Nijhoff, 1982, ISBN 90-247-2614-X .
  • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Volume II: 1631-1634 . Nijhoff, ISBN 90-247-3339-1 .
  • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Volume III: 1635-1642. Nijhoff, 1990, ISBN 90-247-3781-8 .
  • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Volume IV: The self-portraits. Springer-Verlag , Dordrecht 2005, ISBN 1-4020-3280-3 .
  • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Volume V: The Small-Scale History Paintings. Springer-Verlag, Dordrecht 2011, ISBN 978-1-4020-4607-0 .
  • A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Volume VI: Rembrandt's Paintings Revisited - A Complete Survey. Springer-Verlag, Dordrecht 2014, ISBN 978-94-017-9173-1 .

criticism

The Rembrandt Research Project has been criticized primarily for its depreciation practice. For example, criticism was voiced by a group of Anglo-Saxon art historians, including some museum curators, whose motives were the methodology of the project and the danger to their own Rembrandt holdings. The former director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague , Frits Duparc , criticized van de Wetering's position in the project, which would stand as an authority over the other researchers and set the direction. Wetering replied that he was collecting the information from his research colleagues and then publishing it.

literature

  • Kristin Bahre et al. (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-8321-7694-2 .
  • Svetlana Alpers : Rembrandt as an entrepreneur. His studio and the market. DuMont literature and art, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7297-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kristin Bahre et al. (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, p. 208.
  2. ↑ a b Kristin Bahre et al. (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont literature and art, Cologne 2006, p. 209.
  3. ↑ a b Review by Christian Tümpels on arthistoricum.net on Jeroen Giltaij: Rembrandt Rembrandt . Exhibition catalog Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto 2002/03 / Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main 2003, Wolfratshausen: Edition Minerva 2003. Accessed December 3, 2008.
  4. ↑ a b Kristin Bahre et al. (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, p. 258.
  5. ↑ Kristin Bahre et al. (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, p. 210.
  6. ↑ Kristin Bahre et al. (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, p. 221.
  7. ^ Van de Wetering - Rembrandt: What can I do for the world to want to make an authority out of me! ( Memento of the original from August 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Interview with van de Wetering on art-magazin.de. Accessed December 2, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-magazin.de