With an extraordinary blend of the commonplace and the sophisticated, Rembrandt captured the essential humanity of his subjects. From his intimate observations of everyday life to his richly envisioned biblical allegories, the Dutch master created moving, inspiring images that have captivated viewers across four centuries. This original collection offers an unusual perspective on the artist, consisting exclusively of his drawings—all in their original colors, and most of them in their original sizes. These acclaimed drawings date from the 1620s to the 1660s, spanning Rembrandt's prolific career and documenting his changes in style and focus. Superb examples from every genre of the artist's work include landscape drawings, figure studies, scenes from the Old and New Testaments, animal sketches, and several portraits, including a few of the self-images for which he is famed. Beautifully produced in a generous format on high-quality paper, this deluxe edition offers a rare variety of 116 works from more than twenty major European and American museums. Informative captions accompany each illustration.
Author
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardship. Yet his drawings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high and for twenty years he taught nearly every important Dutch painter. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. The self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity. In both painting and printmaking he exhibited a complete knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of the Jewish population of Amsterdam. Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization."
