400 Years: Rembrandt's Birthday
This year marks the 400th birthday of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Rembrandt was born in Leiden, the Netherlands on July 15th, 1606, and died in Amsterdam on October 4th, 1669. Hundreds of years haven't diminished Rembrandt's impact. One of the true masters, his work still reverberates in the minds of modern scholars.
The University of Chicago Press distributes a number of Rembrandt-related titles for Amsterdam University Press and Eburon Academic Publishers.
Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt's Paintings (forthcoming) by Marieke de Winkel
De Winkel demonstrates how clothes and apparel function within the symbolic and iconographic meaning of Rembrandt's paintings.
Images of the Feminine in Rembrandt's Work by Anat Gilboa
Gilboa examines how Rembrandt's portrayals of women reflect his intense dialogue with pictorial tradition and the cultural climate of seventeenth-century Netherlands.
The Learned Eye: Regarding Art, Theory, and the Artist's Reputation by Marieke van den Doel
Artists of the seventeenth century were known not just for their skill with a brush and canvas, but also for their knowledge of history, poetry, and literature—what was referred to as an oculus eruditus or "learned eye."
Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition by Mieke Bal
Mieke Bal questions the traditional boundaries between literary and visual analysis with close, side-by-side readings of some of the Dutch master's works alongside paintings of the same era whose attribution is still debated.
Rembrandt: The Painter at Work by Ernst van de Wetering
Ernst van de Wetering's Rembrandt: The Painter at Work is the result of a lifelong search for Rembrandt's working methods, his intellectual approach to the art of painting and the way in which his studio functioned.
Rembrandt's Reading: The Artist's Bookshelf of Ancient Poetry and History by Amy Golahny
Amy Golahny uses a 1656 inventory to reconstruct Rembrandt's library, discovering anew how his reading of history contributed to his creative process.
Rembrandt: Reputation and the Practice of Connoisseurship by Catherine Scallen
The first full-length study of the catalogues raisonnés, the results of individual connoisseurs' evaluations from 1870 to 1935 of the authenticity and quality of Rembrandt's paintings, concentrates on the written connoisseurship of Wilhelm von Bode, Abraham Bredius, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, and Wilhelm Valentiner, whose articles and catalogues shaped the modern conception of Rembrandt as a painter.
An in-depth study of the traditional critical reception of Rembrandt in France reveals a preoccupation with his perceived "authenticity," "naturalism," and "naiveté," demonstrating how the artist became an ancestral figure, a talisman with whom others aligned themselves to increase the value of their own work.