The Curious Life And Works Or Rembrandt

The Curious Life And Works Or Rembrandt Van Rign Essay, Research Paper The Curious Life, Art, Fame, and Success of Rembrandt van Rijn Perhaps one of the most admired yet obscure artists in history is Rembrandt van Rijn. His inauspicious life significantly influenced his unique art style that was slightly controversial to the standard, classic baroque art of his time in the early to mid 1600?s. Rembrandt was born to a destitute family on July 15, 1606, in Leiden, Netherlands. His future was limited in oppurtunities due to his lack of money to finance anything that might be available. His parents took great care in his education and sent him to a creditable school called The Latin School. At the age of fourteen Rembrandt was enrolled at the famous Leiden University. The program

there did not satisfy him and so he resigned from further education to pursue a career in art(Encarta). Thus began his imfamous art career. In the beginning of his life as an artist, he took lessons from a local master named Jacob van Swanenburch. Swanenburch taught Rembrandt as much as possible with the available local resources. (Spence, Still, Rembrandt was not content with his education and wanted bigger and better things. Accordingly, he moved to Amsterdam to take lessons from Pieter Lasstman, a man famous for his historical paintings. After six months of mastering everything he had been taught, Rembrandt returned to Leiden to further develop his techniques. In Leiden, at the age of twenty-two, Rembrandt decided to apply his education and to teach his first pupils. Although

this was financially supportive, it was not what he most desired. After educating many, he realized his greatest love was not teaching, but painting/ Consequently, he decided to return to Amsterdam in 1631 for a better life and a new beginning with his own art. In Amsterdam he fell in love and married a woman named Saskia van Uylenburgh, who was the cousin of a successful art dealer. With this inclusion to a circle of art commerce, came much success. This enhanced his business and brought him in contact with wealthy patrons who eagerly commissioned his portraits. Rembrandt?s business was flourishing at this time and as a result he produced many famous paintings such as The Noble Slav. Rembrandt?s paintings were in demand especially the mythological and religious works. These new

paintings from Rembrandt would mark the beginning of one of three phases of Rembrdandt?s prosperous and successful art career. In his early stage as an artist, Rembrandt was notably influenced by his teacher, Pieter Lastman. His choice of dramatic subjects as opposed to lackluster subjects was very typical of his art of that time. In addition, the subjects in his paintings were crowded in their compositional arrangements. Additionally, there was a great emphasis on the contrast of light and dark, which seemed to be a very prevalent characteristic of baroque art. The costumes of his subjects were very exotic and extraordinary, differentiating him from typical Dutch artists. In his primitive and experimental portraits, Rembrandt tended to have a preoccupation with the sitters?

features and also with details of clothing and the features of the furniture in the background and foreground. In his 1634 painting of his wife, Saskia, in Saskia as Flora, he, as he so typically did, had Saskia representing another being. The detail of her face demonstrated his preoccupation for details on the faces of his subjects. Every line was drawn to portray specific emotions of Saskia. In his most plentiful and most famous paintings which depicted biblical subjects, drama was the main emphasis. Along with baroque taste in the other traditional Dutch paintings of the time, his paintings expressed deep emotion and powerful spiritual sensations. In his numerous early paintings of self -portraits, he revealed his tremendous psychological problem in his penetrating