HOW DID REMBRANDT BECOME REMBRANDT?
That was the question.
Did he become one of the world’s greatest artists as a function of the place where he grew up, what he experienced, learnt and saw in his surroundings, or was his development a highly personal, idiosyncratic inner adventure?
Constantijn Huygens thought it was the latter. In his opinion, Rembrandt’s “consummate genius” had nothing to do with his humble origins. The miller’s son had little of his father in him. Huygens saw the talent of Rembrandt and Lievens as the strongest possible evidence against the existence of a blood-based aristocracy.
“Had they been left to their own devices,” wrote Huygens, “but had been fired by the urge to paint at some point in time, it is my firm belief that they would have achieved the same heights as now. It is wrong-headed to hold that their achievements can be attributed to the guidance of others.”
Perhaps Rembrandt’s exceptional talents, audacity and ambition were such that he would have become a superb painter if he had been born into an entirely different milieu. It is possible. But he was not.
He was born in 1606 as the son of a miller in Leiden. Rembrandt grew up in a large, loving family of tradespeople. His hard-working, prosperous parents appreciated the importance of procuring a good education for their youngest son. They sent him to the Latin school, in the hope of an academic career. He was a university student for at least two years.
Even so, when Rembrandt told his parents, Harmen and Neeltje, that he wanted to be a painter, they agreed to pay for his apprenticeship with two experienced, highly regarded masters. Once his apprenticeship was concluded, he set up as an independent artist—while living at his parental home, in his native city.
He grew up in the first university city of the Dutch Republic, where he came into contact with scientific discoveries, strange collections of objects, theological disputes, biblical, mythical and historical stories—all of which exerted a certain influence. They laid the foundations for the complexity of his thinking, encouraged him on his incessant, obsessive quest for new solutions to his artistic and intellectual problems.
That the mind of the young Rembrandt was sharpened for years at the Latin school and at university helps to explain how he was able to develop later so spectacularly as a history painter. His work attests to a profound knowledge and understanding of the biblical and mythological stories that he told in paint. He had a superb eye for detail, context, allusion and meaning.
The spirit of his most illustrious predecessor in the city, Lucas van Leyden, and of his two masters, Jacob van Swanenburg and Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, kindled the fire of his imagination and set it ablaze. The boy wanted to be a painter. In the late 1620s he experimented as a true alchemist, working alongside his one-year-younger friend—and later rival—Jan Lievens, gradually developing his exuberant style: a palette of subtle, muted colours, with bold, constantly varying brushstrokes and a magnificent command of chiaroscuro. Rembrandt became the master of light and dark.
Huygens arranged valuable commissions for him at the court in The Hague. Rembrandt set up a successful workshop, and spread his fame by etching his own face and arranging for the distribution of those prints all over Europe. Since he saw too few opportunities in Leiden, because of the repressive religious climate and economic malaise, he travelled more and more often to Amsterdam in the summer of 1631, settling there permanently a year later. His youth was then behind him for good.
Leiden was a city full of contrasts. Proudly liberated and unconventional, but under the constant threat of war. Principled and multilingual, but narrow-minded, torn by religious strife. Founded on humanist principles, but ruled by strict Calvinists. Prosperous, but with a great many penniless labourers, orphans and beggars living with its confines.
Rembrandt lived with paradoxes on a daily basis. He was a product of his time and place in history, of his upbringing and education, but within this context he forged his own path—he was self-willed and headstrong. He was a working-class boy with an academic intellect and a razor-sharp intuition. Rembrandt was a realist, but in order to approach the effect of reality, he showed himself a master of illusion. He understood perfectly the ingredients of success, displayed unbridled ambition, but also dared to withstand the pressure of the prevailing fashions and moral dogmas.
As I was writing this book, I was struck by the painful relevance to today’s world of the societal issues with which Rembrandt grappled. A young man growing up in Leiden in the twenty-first century also lives in a world in which war, intolerance, consumerism, immigration and religious extremism loom large.
Rembrandt made those themes timeless by adopting a human, intimate, personal perspective in his work. He is not only the painter of outward appearances but also—and most notably—of the inner life. His work, especially his self-portraits, provides insight into human nature in an age in which ideas about the individual and self-awareness, science and artistic skill were developing at lightning speed.
When Huygens went to see the “two noble young painters” in their studio, he advised them, as he had previously advised Rubens, to keep an accurate inventory and description of their works. “In these records,” wrote Huygens in the memoirs of his younger years, “for each painting, after first giving a brief account of their working methods, they should indicate—for admiration and instruction down the ages—how and why they had designed, composed and elaborated it.”
What a wonderful thing it would have been if Rembrandt had indeed kept a book like that for future generations. Then we would have known all sorts of things about him instead of constantly groping in the dark. It is a paradoxical desire: we strive to solve the enigmas surrounding Rembrandt, and yet what is more deflating than a solved mystery?
In my quest for his childhood I caught glimpses of what drove him. Now that I have seen those bright flashes, I look at the young master differently.
Self-portrait in a Soft Hat and Embroidered Cloak, state 6 of 15, 1631.
Self-portrait in a Soft Hat and Embroidered Cloak, state 7 of 15, 1631.
There he is. Vigorous and vulnerable. Self-assured, but slightly diffident. His clothes were intended to prove that he knew perfectly well, with his upturned little flaxen moustache, how things were done. Here the young artist poses on a single occasion as a gentleman: a modern, prosperous burgher in a black cloak, a lace collar and wide-brimmed hat with a gold band around it.
The collar is painted in large, coarse strokes, from top to bottom, with thick white paint; threads of paint adhered to the panel when he lifted his coarse-haired brush. It is more like an imagined collar than a real one. And then that red tacking thread, to attach the ends of the collar. It dangles quasi-nonchalantly over the hem. Like a drop of blood that he has casually wiped out with his index finger.
Peter Paul Rubens wore just such an exuberant, wide-brimmed hat in a print in which he introduced himself to the public. Rubens: the most elegant painter of his day, who moved easily in the highest circles and executed one grand commission after another with superb élan.
For his own painting and his etching after the same subject, Rembrandt adopted the same pose, but worked and reworked it until it acquired an air of buoyancy amid a perfect play of light and he had at length surpassed the Antwerp master. That etching was an obsession. He modified it again and again, scratching a few lines and dipping the plate in acid once more. With hundreds of strokes of his etching needle, he wove a refined pattern in his cloak. Eleven states of the etching have been preserved. When he was finally finished, the result was dazzling: Rembrandt blew Rubens’s hat right off his head.
With this proud self-portrait, Rembrandt entered the arena of cosmopolitan Amsterdam, the big city in which he sought to project his image: the calling card of the latest star on the firmament. The best way to show how well he could paint the people of the merchant class and portray them at their best. Look—that is how magnificent the end result can be! Signed: “RHL van Rijn, 1632”.
In Leiden he had learnt virtually everything. In Amsterdam he was going to have it all: he would become the most famous painter in Europe, meet his first, great love, become a father himself. Rembrandt stood on the threshold of adulthood. His eyes sparkled with the thrill of expectation. Whatever was coming—he was ready for it.
When he signed his painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp he no longer used the old initials “RHL”. Instead he signed “Rembrant fecit”. Like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael, he now needed only his first name in the world.
He had invented himself.
Rembrandt had become Rembrandt.
Self-portrait with Wide-brimmed Hat, 1632.