Rembrandt

Images and Metaphors
By Christian Tümpel

Rembrandt used the achievements of his teachers, predecessors and contemporaries to develop and realise his own artistic aims and abilities, and it was to these too that he owed his basic artistic impulses. His urge to achieve unmistakable originality led him to overturn aesthetic and thematic conventions; he expanded technique and experimented with the use of colour and forms of etching. Although the art of the past always served him as a starting point, he sought to surpass it by staging works that were both unexpectedly daring and apposite to their subject.‘Well worth reading’ The Spectator‘An impressive accomplishment! 

Art Times

‘Unmissable . . . Christian and Astrid Tumpel are acknowledged to be among the greatest living authorities on the 17th-century Dutch master, and in this book . . . they have distilled their expertise to explain the stories behind his major paintings and to relate them to Rembrandt’s life and to contemporary Amsterdam.’

The Daily Mail

‘Well worth reading’

The Spectator

'Rembrandt was, above all, a paitner and etcher of scenes from the Old and New Testaments and it is in the description of his interpretations of these texts that Dr Tumpel is unrivalled among modern writers on the artist. The analysis, for example, of Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, the great painting of 1656 - the year of Rembrandt's bankruptcy, incidentally - at Kassel, is truly instructive and enlightening, and it is just one of many such rich and cogent analyses. Dr Tumpel's book is ... the product of long and mature reflection on the art of Rembrandt and, in particular, on his religious art.'

Christopher Brown, Director, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, The Art Newspaper, No. 186, December 2007

250 colour illustrations

Contents: Foreword - Rembrandt’s Youth in Leiden and his Training as a Painter - Constantin Huygens Discovers Rembrandt and Jan Lievens - The Language of Baroque - Self-Portraits - Rembrandt the Etcher - Rembrandt Gains Recognition in Amsterdam - Rembrandt and Saskia - Rembrandt’s Commissions from Prince Frederick Hendrick - Rembrandt and Judaism - The Biblical Histories of the First Amsterdam Period - An Uncommon Subject - Rembrandt and Antiquity - Self-Portraits of the Baroque Period - Rembrandt Again Accepts Portrait Commissions - The Night Watch: Myth and Reality - Rembrandt’s Crisis and the Art of the 1640s: The Hidden Symbolism of the New Testament Depictions - The Hundred Guilder Print: Suggestions of how the Story Hangs Together - Geertghe Dircx and Hendrickje Stoffels - Etchings of the 1650s - Paintings of the 1650s - The Language of Pictures - Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy - Rembrandt and Ruffo - Rembrandt’s Late Work - Late Self-Portraits - The Myth of the Misjudged and Forgotten Artist - Notes - Bibliography - Index of Illustrations

Christian Tümpel was until 2002 Professor of the History of Art in Nijmegen/ The Netherlands. He has devoted his life to researching Rembrandt, starting in 1968 with his doctoral dissertation about Rembrandt’s historical paintings, which earned him a fellowship with his wife Astrid Tümpel at the Warburg Institute in London the following year. In 1971 he was awarded the Prize of  the Dutch Royal Academy of  Science for his studies of Rembrandt, an honour the academy only bestowes every twenty years. He has contributed to the catalogues of numerous international exhibitions, most recently  to the anniversary exhibition Rembrandt – Zoektocht van een genie at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam; and has presented papers at conferences in Washington, Sacramento,  Detroit,  Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin and Hamburg. He was involved in the curatorial preparation of major exhibitions of Dutch art and 19th century sculpture in  Amsterdam, Haarlem, Nijmegen,  Jerusalem, Münster and Berlin. His essays and books on Dutch art and on Rembrandt have been translated into many languages.