The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0008/00081.txt

Text File | 1992-08-14 | 44KB | 638 lines

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{Rembrandt
Chapter III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Sharp, Elizabeth A.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{rembrandt
leyden
life
rembrandt's
date
own
van
work
early
expression
hear
audio
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}
$Date{}
$Log{Hear On Leyden*53500016.aud
}
Title:       Rembrandt
Author:      Sharp, Elizabeth A.

Chapter III

Chapter III - Youth - Leyden

     Leyden - Its University and prominent men - Rembrandt's parents and home
- Rembrandt's birth - Boyhood - Surroundings - Interests - Schooling -
Apprenticeship - Swanenburgh - "Vanitas" - Lastman's studio in Amsterdam -
Technique - Etching - Etchers of the sixteenth century - Rembrandt the etcher
- His progress as painter - Contemporaries - Return to Leyden - Guilds of
painters - Theatre of Anatomy - Self-portraiture - Early paintings - Early
etchings - Early portraits - Biblical subjects - Portraits of his mother - His
Leyden period - Method of development - His technique - Huygens' record of
Rembrandt in Leyden.

     In the early days of the seventeenth century Leyden, a flourishing city,
ranked second in importance to Amsterdam.  Its industries flourished, its
cloth factories were the first in Europe, its burgher merchants were its
aristocrats.  The memory of the terrible experiences of the famous war, become
a thrilling tradition to the rising generation of Holland, was fading in the
growing prosperity of this fair, cultured city.  The celebrated University,
founded in commemoration of the victorious siege, was Leyden's chief witness
to her intellectual supremacy in the Republic, and indeed in Europe.  Students
flocked to it from all parts of Holland, from all parts of Europe; it counted
among its professors such distinguished men as Scaliger, Lipsius, Vossius, and
Arminius, whose name is associated with the Calvinistic struggle.

     Rembrandt's parents lived at the corner of the Weddesteg (the little
street of the slaughter-house), near the Wittepoort (the White Gate), in a
house on the angle of the ramparts at a point where the Rhine divides and
forms a natural moat round the town and feeds its canals with moving water.
Much of the old town still stands - houses with crows' nests and gables, busy
tree-shaded canals, the stone-paved market-square dominated by a great
windmill, the picturesque central Burg dating from Saxon days and dominated by
the tower of the old cathedral.  The ramparts have gone; the town has grown
out beyond the Rhine limit on the western side; a school for young seamen
stands on the place of the painter's early home.

     Rembrandt Harmenszoon, or Harmensz, van Rijn was the son of Harmen
Gerritsz van Rijn, a miller, and of his wife Neeltje (Cornelia), the daughter
of Willems, a Leyden baker.  Rembrandt's father belonged to the lesser burgher
class, and lived in comfortable prosperity.  An old print published in
Vosmaer's biography shows the position of his mill and house with its enclosed
garden, and finally destroys the legend that the painter was born and lived in
a mill near the village of Leydersdorp.  It has been proved, moreover, by M.
Rammelman Elsevier, a distinguished palaeographer and descendant of the famous
printers of Leyden, in the Konst en Letterbode, that Harmen lived in the
Weddesteg from 1599-1646.  That he was a man of some education and worth is
witnessed by the fact that he held more than once the post of "Chief of the
Parish of the Pelican District." Recent researches show that he owned a grave
in the church of St. Peter's; and that, according to his will, he died
possessed of a windmill, several houses, plate, jewels, linen, and other
household items, also of some gardens outside the town.  Rembrandt was the
fifth of six children born to the miller and his wife.  The exact date of
birth is uncertain; authorities are divided whether to accept July 15th, 1606,
1607, or 1609-1606 is the most probable, being that given by the early
biographers, Orlers (whose Description of Leyden was published in Rembrandt's
lifetime), Leeuwen, and Houbraken.  Vosmaer Rembrandt's chief Dutch
biographer) rejected this date for 1608, upon Dr. Scheltema's discovery of the
entry dated July 10th, 1634, in the marriage registers of Amsterdam:
"Rembrandt Harmensz, of Leyden, aged 26." In the British Museum there is an
etched portrait of Rembrandt by himself, inscribed: Aet 24, anno 1631.
Charles Blanc points out that the figure 24 may be read as 25, and thus bring
the date into accord with the preferred date of birth 1606.  But I should like
to point out that the inscription "anno 1631" does not necessitate the birth
date 1607, unless the etching were executed after July 15th.  Therefore it is
possible still to accept the inscription as a proof of the birth date 1606.
One of two documents found by Dr. Bredius (the Curator of the Mauritshuis at
The Hague) tends to further confusion.  It is the proces-verbal of a committee
of experts convened in September 16th, 1653, to decide upon the attribution of
a picture to Paul Bril, and speaks of Rembrandt as "about forty-six." If
accepted literally it places the birth date in 1607; but if we accept it as
meaning "in his forty-sixth year" the birth date remains 1606.  The second
document is a Register of students of the Faculty of Letters at Leyden in
1620, in which Rembrandt's age is stated as fourteen, and thus again confirms
the birth date as 1606; and this date we propose to accept, and the more
readily as it is upheld by such competent critics as Messrs. Bredius, Bode,
Karl Woermann, and E. Michel.

[Hear On Leyden]
The painter was born and lived in a mill.

     Little is known of Rembrandt's boyhood.  Though details of his early life
are lacking, we are very familiar with the appearance and character of his
parents, from the many drawings and paintings the youth made of them. Very
familiar is the thin, resolute face of the miller with his beak nose, small
keen eyes, and compressed determined lips - a man of will, persistence, and
activity, who, judging from the lines of his face, had overcome manifold
difficulties on his road to success.  The mother we know still better.  From
the loving, respectful care the son bestowed on her portraits, from his
studies of her habitual positions of repose or during her daily occupations,
it is easy to infer how strong and wise was the influence she exerted on the
mind and character of her impressionable, warm-hearted son.  The lines of a
strong character and a generous, kindly disposition are written in the loved
face, already aged and marked by time and suffering when the boy was old
enough to draw her at home and watch while she sat in her armchair with folded
hands, or read, horn spectacles on nose, from the pages of the great Bible
spread open before her.  Of his brothers and sisters we know little; of their
childhood, nothing.  In after days Rembrandt drew one or two portraits of his
elder brother, the miller, and in his early days in Amsterdam he used his
sister Lysbeth's quiet fair face as the model for many of his women
characters.  But it is a significant fact that even from his earliest days he
seems to have been little attracted by childhood, by immaturity, as such.  His
passion was to depict life in full abounding expression.  In his veins, along
his nerves, ran the strong, passionate energy of life in expansion, not life
in the bud, actual not potential, of his powerful nation; and nothing immature
or weak stayed his pencil, unless deliberately selected for a definite
purpose.  Hence we may infer that in his childhood he stood somewhat apart
from his brothers and their playmates, sought his own interests and
amusements, and almost unconsciously began the quest that should absorb his
whole lifetime, with, perhaps, only Lysbeth for confidant and admirer.  Else
there would surely remain some sketches or drawings of these playmates, some
Ostade-like scenes of youth that had impressed him strongly.  Yet, as a boy,
his artistic imagination was stimulated in a hundred ways.  There was much at
his very door to see and watch.