CHAPTER THE MASTER'S TOUCH 15

hand grasps to the diverse richness of a garment, is urged upon us

as the display of different qualities of pigment that is not only col-

I ored, but worked and shaped. The oath taken by the Batavian revo-
lutionaries is celebrated in the very material of the paint.
In early accounts of Rembra ndt, the thickness of his pigment
consistently draws comment: paint an inch thick; a portrait painted
so that the canvas could be lifted by the sitter's painted nose; jewels
THE MASTER'S and pearls which seem to have been done in relief. Hou braken
makes a story out of it: he tells how in order to maximize the effect
of a single pearl , Rembrandt painted out the figure of Cleopatra. 1
TOUCH All of these comments speak to Rembrandt's handling of the paint ,
but also to his using it to attemp t to represent objects by recreating
them in paint. Thus a compelling reason for having seen The Man
with the Golden H elmet (pl. 12) as a canonical Rembrand t is the im-
0 N E o F TH E Mo s T distinctive and identifying aspects of Rem- pasto of the worked metal of the helmet. Though among recent crit-
brandt's paintings is the way he applies his paint. Rather than striv- ics at least one found the impasto of the helmet overly subst antial
ing to craft a representation of the world seen, as does Vermeer in and hence not attributable to the master 's hand, th e evidence is that,
The Art of Painting, for example, Rembrandt in his use of paint ap- since Rembrandt's own day, a substantiating impast o has been seen
pears to obscure it, drawing our attention to th e paint itself rather as a characteristic of Rembrandt' s productio n .2
than to the objects it represents. Look at the sleeve of the late Lu- These old observation s have been confirmed by recent technic al
cretia in Minneapolis (pl. 9). The cuff of the garment that discloses research , which suggests certain constancies in Rembran dt's ex-
the hand summoning witnesses to her suicide is tawny, worked over tremely various and continuously experimental manner. If one could
in a complex patte rn of yellow and white brushstrokes applied with point to a single major discovery- one which signals a change in
a loaded brush. We find a similar handling of the paint in The Oath the unde rstanding of Rembrand t' s way of painting-it is that the
of Claudius Civilis (pl. 4, fig. 1.3). The central part is all that re- laying on of glazes in the Venetian manner is not basic to his tech-
mains of a much larger painting that Rembrandt was asked to do for nique. A glaze is a pigment made transparent by a high admixture
the great new Amsterdam Town Hall. It represent s the pledge given of resin. Titian and the other Venetians dragged one such thin,
to the leader Claudius Civilis preceding the rebellion of the Bata- tran sparent layer or veil of dark paint over an underlying layer of
vians, the early inhabitants of Holland, against their Roman rulers. lighter paint to create an optical play of color on a rough-woven can-
We can compare it with the way another Dutch painter painted a vas. Rembrandt, on the other hand, tended to build up a solid
historical scene (fig. 1.4). In his depiction of the thirtee nth cent ury, structure out of opaque pigments. Having blocked the figures onto
Caesar van Everdingen accounts for every visible detail of the world, his prepared ground. Rembrandt characteristically laid in thickly,
even down to the fringe on the foreground rug. We are made eye- in high impasto, the highest lit areas of the picture, sometimes
witnesses to the people and accoutrements of thirteenth-ce ntury working the paint with the palette knife or even with his fingers
history as if they were objects depicted in a still-life. Time is effec- rather than with the brush. It looks as if on occasion Rembrandt
tively effaced and robbed of a sense of history. Rembrandt, on the even used a glaze in a contrar y way to heighten the solidity effect:
other hand , obscures the surface of both people and objects. His the shoulder of the man in red raising his musket to right of center
painting is hard to make out at first- the figures and objects, which in The N ightwatch appears to be a patch of red lake glaze put on top
appear to emerge into light from the obscured, darker surro und - of some red ochre. It is not used to describe a partic ular fabric or
ings, are bound in an extraordinary way to the paint surface. The costume, but to call attention to solidity and also visual richness for
visual presence of the paint interferes with, or replaces, the implicit its own sake.3 When asked about the materiality of Rembrandt 's
access to the surfaces of the world . Everything, from the firmness of paint, one conservator I talked to referred to the white lead (with its

14
 16 CHAPTER ONE

admixture of chalk) structure as the skeleton or armature of the pic-

ture, while another spoke of Rembrandt's works as having the solid-
ity and the appearance of being wrought that we associate with
metal. (Originally these effects would have been stron ger. Conser-
vators point out that as the result of restoration procedures which
used to involve "ironing" the canvas in the course of relining , few
Rembrandts today retain their original impasto.) The raised areas of
paint are built up so that they can reflect natural light and cast shad-
ows as would real, substantial objects (pl. 7). A paradoxical effect of
this handling is to make the highest-lit areas of the painted world
not the most ephemeral, with light erasing form as it so often does
in Western painting, but precisely among the most substantial.
\ Rembrandt was a slow rather than a fast painter. Layers of paint
testify to what we know about the length of time it took him to com-
plete and deliver works. (It is also possible that he was one of those
artists who was loath to let a work go. And many who have studied
Rembrandt comment that he got not more but less certain as time
went on.) Baldinucci, who comment s on the reluctance of prospec-
tive clients who knew how long it would take to sit for Rembrandt, 1 .1 . Rembrandt , TheJ ewish Bride. By courte sy of th e Rijk smu seum -Stichting , Am sterdam .
puts it well when he wonders how, with such quick brushstrokes,
Rembrand t worked so slowly and painstakingly.4 For all his accom-
plishment, Rembrandt was not notably decisive or economical as a
painter. He contr asts in this with the actual speed and the effect of
speed given off by the bru sh of Hals. Though the paint of Rem-
brandt and that of Hals is often compared, there is little similarity
between their modes of painting besides the visibility of the brush-
work . Indeed, with the exception of those who followed Rem-
brandt's example, it is hard to find other Dutch artists whose paint
surface is comparable to his in this regard . One might cite the
slowly worked and built-up surfaces of certain animal painters-I
have in mind some cows by Cuyp or the coarse flank of Potter's fa-
\ mous Bull. But these are descriptively imitative of the surfaces of
things as Rembrandt' s worked paint is not.
One of the reasons that the thick ness of Rembrandt's paint was
commented on in his own time is that it fitted into an established
way of describing pictu res. Writers, invoking ancient precedent,
commonly distinguishe d between two modes of painting-a smooth
and a rough one, or a finished and a less finished, loose, or free one. 1.2. Jan de Bray, A Couple R epresented as Ulyssesand Penelope, 1668. Collection of the J. B.
This was related to the distinction between those paintings appro- Speed Art Mu seum , Loui sville, Kentuck y.
priately viewed close up and those appr opriately viewed from far-
ther away, which was instanced by Horace when he came up with
his long-lived phrase "ut pictura poesis," though Horace did not
 THE MASTER'S TOUCH 17

introduce the rough/smooth distinction. 5 Certain social and artistic \

values came to be attached to the difference between the two man -
ners. In Vasari's accoun t th e rough or unfinished man ner of Do-
natello or of Titian offered a display of imagination over and above
mere manual skills and, as such, appealed to connoisseurs, who en-
joyed knowing how to fill in what the artist's quick and brillia nt
brush suggested to their sophisticated eyes and imagina tions. 6 T he
rough style, then, in the Ital ian account at least, was th e virtuoso's
art for the knowing courtier . Karel van Mander , the north ern wri ter
and artist often referr ed to as the D utch Vasari, picked up th e Ital -
ian distinct ion and rep eated it (his terms are "net" and "rouw"),
with a warnin g, for the benefit of the northern artists, that they
would do well to start smoot h.
In the Ne therl and s, it will come as no surprise, Rembrandt and
Hal s were among thos e called rou gh, and Dou and Van Dyc k
smooth. By 1650, Rembr andt and Van Dy ck were spoken of as the
paradigmatic artists in the two respec tive modes, and we have ac-
counts of artists at that tim e who felt they had to make a choice be-
twe en the two.7
Today the rou gh/smoo th disti nction with its attendant values is
offered not only as a description of, but implicitly also as an expla-
nat ion for, Rem brandt's paint . On this account, Rembrandt's han-
dlin g of the paint was a suggestive device directed toward the so-
ph isticat ed viewer. There is an anecdote told by Houbraken about
Rem brandt's studio that fits the model of the refined viewing skills
assumed by the rough manner: the painter advised visitors to his
stud io to stand back lest they be poisoned by the smell of paint.
This is perhaps reiterated in the postscript to the letter to Con-
stanti jn H uygens in which Rem brandt instructs his patron to hang a
gift painting in strong light and to view it at a distance. 8 Further, it
is tru e that several of the early writers, among them Felibien and de
Piles, recommend a distant view as .appropriate to Rembrandt's
bru shwork in terms which fit this sense of the distinction rough/
1.32. Rembr andt , Self -Portrait, 1658, detail (hand holding maulst ick). ©T he F rick Collection , New York. smooth. This was, after all, the established verbal manner in which
to give a positive account of the rough mode at the time. But does it
offer a just account of Rembrandt's practice?
In the north by 1650, the balance of taste for the two manners
was the reverse of the account just given. Let us take first take up
the issue of how the two styles were received: contemporary ac-
counts offer evidence of what was involved for Jan de Baen, one of
Rembrandt's pupils, in choosing the proper artistic path to follow in
th e Netherlands about 1650. It was the smooth style associated with
18 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 19

Van Dyck, rather than the rough one, that was perceived as appro- ist in the north to associate the visible display of the handling of the
priate to the court, and historically it was seen as the new fashion paint with what I have called craft. But he did this with a difference,
replacing the old style of Rembrandt (figs. 1.27, 3.24). 9 In stead of and to clarify this point it will be useful to play him off against a
appealing to a knowing and imaginative courtier, the rough style particular craft tradition. Like Rembrandt's works, this tradition
was seen as passe and, in the case of Rembrandt at least, as being cannot be described in terms of the rough/smooth distinction as
tainted with the marks of the studio. On this view, to call attention that came to be understood. It did not offer lack of finish as an en-
to one's paint was not the refined thing to do. This is one way of ticement for the connoisseur, but instead made a certain kind of pic-
understandin g the early accounts of Rembrandt 's life, which report torial craftsmanship the basis of a claim about the nature or value of
that he was too openly messing about with his paints. Baldinucci, art. I am referring to the tradition of painters who were often in-
for example, rep orts that he cleaned his brush es on his clothes , and volved with some form of still-life, and who considered their art to
a persistent theme in Houbraken's life is the relationship between be in competition with Nature herself.
Rembrandt's uncout h manners and his rough manner of painting. Jan Bruegel, the first great flower paint er, strives to make his
(Rembrandt 's recorded public behavior, which we shall consider in painted flowers equal to and even finer than those made by Nature
chapters 3 and 4, does not contradict these reports. ) (figs. 1.5, 1.6). 11 His paintings are a display of artistic virtuosity,
Why should the attitude toward rough and smooth in the north and it is for that reason Bruegel intends us to see his brushst rokes at
be so different at this time from that in the established tradition of work as well as the panel which supports them. To appre ciate the
writing about pictur es? It might be a sign that the north was histori- art in this art, one does not stand back but comes close. Although
cally in the vanguard of European taste in embracing a new neo- paintings of this kind are often described as remind ers of mort ality,
classical finish-tha t it was so to speak "beyond the rough." This is there is evidence that they were produced as a display of huma n
how De Baen's choice has been understood by modern scholars. But craft and to satisfy a desire for the possession of knowledge. They
I suspect that the turning away from Rembrandt's rough handling were included in those curious encyclopedic collections, the first
is also a reaction against the old cultural status or location of art museums, that were assembled by European princes to be a micro-
in the north. Even in Rembrandt's time much art-making in the cosm of the world and, in turn , recorded in yet further pictures.
Netherlands was still bound to the craft world of guild and work- Such a collection might include sculpture, painting, jewels, coins,
shop rather than to a privileged and literate society beyond. The shells, a sea horse, and also flowers in paintings as a way to pre serve
smooth style was seen as marking a break with this. There was a them (fig. I. 7). But besides presenti ng themselves as a display of
certain justness about the criticisms of Rembrandt's paint. In paint- human artistry, Jan Bruegel's pictures supply (or flirt with ·supply-
ing in the manner that he did, despite the growing popularity of the ing) value in more ways than one: the specimens are painted so as to
smooth manner , Rembrandt called attention to his craft by effec- fool our eyes into thinking they are the real thing; they are chosen
tively presenting his performance as that of a maker in the studio. for their rarity; the materials were chosen with an eye to their cost-
In effect, he transformed rough painting negatively viewed into a copper as a support frequently, lapis lazuli as a pigment , gold for
newly positive practice. 10 certain frames. It was because of these values, among others , that
We have considered various descriptions of Rembrandt's paint, the paintings were priced more highly than the special specimens
but if we want to explain what Rembrandt was doing, we might put and objects represented in them.
the question in terms of production: does his insistence on the A similar claim to value was made in Holland during Rembrandt 's
thickness or materiality of his paint , to return to a feature noted by lifetime by a painter of still-lifes such as Kalf. In choosing to devote
contemporary commentators , challenge craft in the name of sug- his attention to a rare piece of china , to silver and fine glassware
gestiveness? Or does it rather call attention to craft in a new sense rather than to flowers, Kalf seems to have been competing with
by the production of a substantial , as distinguished from a sug- other human craftsmen rather than with nature. His works make
gestive, pictorial presence? the claim that he could with his paint craft a finer silver plate or
We might consider the nature of the paint surface in Netherland- glass goblet than the silversmith or glass blower could make. We
ish art in somewhat different terms. Rembrandt was_not the first art- watch in slow motion the working of the paint by which he is able to
 ✓
20 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 21

represent the smooth surface of a gleaming glass, or the fuzzy sur- studio for circulation on the market as a number of collectible Rem-
face of a peach. Such a painter lays claim to being supreme among brandts. And it is notable that Rembrandt signed and dated the
human craftsmen. And he paints his pictures for wealthy Dutch mer- etched shell starting with the first state.
chants who are buying expensive illusions of expensive possessions. The etched shell offers a particularly rich example of how Rem-
My reason for bringing up Jan Bruegel's handling of paint is to brandt established representational values by shunning the multiple
break through the simple reception theory engaged in the discus- values courted by Bruegel's paintings . As an etching of a shell it is
sion of rough and smooth and to introduce, instead, questions of of course a special case, a negative example, both in choice of sub-
the production of painterly value, with which Rembrandt was also ject and choice of medium. Let us now ask how we might describe
concerned. But it is Rembrandt's difference from Bruegel within the values claimed by Rembrandt's paintings. What is the nature of
this scheme of things that I hope to demonstrate, and to that end let his production of painterly value?
us consider the one work in which Rembrandt might be said to have Rembrandt chose to study with a group of Amsterdam painters
taken up the Bruegel mode (fig. 1.8). His etching of a shell is the of small, narrative pictures who called little attention to their paint. 15
only "pure" still-life- by which I mean a work without the added They are not memorable for their surfaces. For them it was the
presence of any human figures-that we have from Rembrandt's story, not the paint with which it was executed, that mattered. The
hand in any medium. (And Rembrandt seems to have discour aged option of rough or smooth seems not to apply. But early in his ca-
artists in his studio who had such talent.) 12 Rembrandt's shell re- reer we find Rembrandt , in a painting done when he was about
minds us of Jan Bruegel, who often painted shells lying beneath a twenty years old, carving into the wet paint surface with the end of
vase of his flowers. In represen ting a shell, Rembrandt turned to an his paint brush or with his maulstick (the wooden stick on which
object that fascinated collectors at the time, because shells were the painter steadies his brush when he paint s) (pl. 1). He already
thought to occupy a separate category on the borderline between art treats his medium as something to be worked in, as if material to be
and nature. The shell was an example of natural artifice, of Nature modeled, though in the early years this handling was often focused
acting like an artist. Put a bit differently, it is Nature reproducing on the underlayers of paint. It is the paint's capacity to be so worked,
something that looks as if it were crafted by man. (The point is not its beauty or value as material substance, that Rembrandt prizes
rather like our delight when we bring a shell or piece of drift-wood from the start. Other painters at the time made on occasion a dis-
home from the beach and display it on a shelf because it seems to play of particularly valuable pigments: Velazquez used ultramarine
mimic the work of a human artist.) 13 But unlike Bruegel's shells or or azurite for a sky, and Frans van Mieris, himself a goldsmith 's
flowers, ther e is no possibility of illusion on the part of Rembrandt's son, gilded a copper plate to achieve a gemlike luster on the painted
shell. The value of Rembrandt 's etched shell is distingui shed from, surface. It is remarkable that Rembrand t was, apparently, the only
rather than associated with, other kind s of values. other Dutch painter at the time to have used gold. We should recall
By making the remarkable decision to etch the shell, transform- in this connection the unexpected use of expensive red lake glaze to
ing its pale colors, its curved and glossy surface, into lines (and build up the shoulder of the musketeer in The Nightwatch. Rem-
dots) of black on white, Rembrand t inten tionally calls attention to brandt's continual experimenta tion with the handling of pigments
the difference between what the shell is made of and a picture of it, did not involve the display of their value as such. On the four occa-
and between the look and the value of the object and the look and sions when he (or his workshop, if the works are not all by him)
the value of an image. 14 Rembrandt was himself a collector and most used gold as ground or, in the Los Angeles Rai sing of Lazarus, as
probab ly owned this shell. But in etching it, and doing that not only part of the paint surface itself, it is less for the purpose of luster
once but reworking it in three successive states, he was not display- than in the interest of the three -dimensionality of the pictorial
ing a taste for natural knowledge, nor a taste for the possession form. 16 His paintings display the gold effect, as in the chain of Aris-
of a rare and expensive shell, nor a taste for fine materials (all the totle, not the thing itself. (One should add that this- displaying
recorded impressions of the shell are on an ordinary paper), but effect rather than valuable materials-could not be said of the pro-
rather what one might call a taste for representation. The shell from duction of etchings, in which Rembrandt 's interest in rare and di-
his collection is transformed and multiplied by his handiwork in the verse kinds of paper is justly renowned.)
22 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 23

· There is another dimension, which is superficially like ahother Jacob Blessing (fig. I. IO) or the characteristic peripheral fading-out
sense, that is engaged by Rembrandt's paint surface. In the mature and lack of spatial definition around the major single figures. The
paintings , paint is worked to engage our sense of touch as it is medi- absence of the illusion of depth in Rembrandt's late paintin gs is not
ated through our sense of sight. Rembrandt lays the paint on with due to the fact that he painted before the introduction of perspec-
his bru sh and often shapes it with his palette knife or fingers so tive theory into the Net.gerlands (as Jan Emmens suggested in R em-
thickly that it looks as if one could lay one's hand on it. Notice the brandt en de regels van de kunst), but rather because he considers
raised ridges of pigment that define the chain (or is it meant as a both the objects in his paintings and the paint itself to be thick or
ring?) which loops over the little finger of the Aristotle in New York solid substances. In his etchings and drawings, when he is not using
(pl. 3). It is true that painters were praised at the time for their abil- paint, Rembrandt, by telling contrast, does depict space persua-
ity to recreate texture in paint. Jan Bruegel, whose flowers we just sively. (A number of artists, among them Hoogstraten and Nicolaes
looked at, was nicknamed Velvet Bruegel for that very reason. He Maes, who were his students ih' the 1640s, pursued the interest of
could, as the name suggested, depict velvet and other surfaces like perspective in paint that Rembrandt eschewed.) There is a kinship
the petals of a flower so that one could, so to speak, see the textureof here with that combination of substantiality of paint and notorious
their surfaces. Rembrand t did not display his craft as a painter by difficulty in depicting space that we find in an artist like Manet. To
rendering those visible properties-the illusory surface effects of such a material sense of pigments and of the objects in view, space is
look and texture-that were captured with the brush of Bruegel or registered negatively, as an absence of substance.
Kalf. In a painted passage such as Aristotle's chain, Rembrandt Before we go any further , we might do well to distinguish be-
makes the materiality of the paint itself representational. Qualities tween three forms in which this availability to touch is manifest in
that we know by touch-the weight and pressure, the substantiality Rembrandt's paintings: the facture or thickness of the paint, the im-
of things-we are made instead to see. plied solidity of objects represented within the paintings, and the
Rembrandt does not expect us to actually touch a painting, as painting itself as an object. It is the overlay or overlapping between
Constable is reported to have wished. 17 But by appealing to the these different but related claims that produces the distinctive ap-
physical activity of touch he is able to suggest that seeing is also an pearance and the nature of his paintings: they can be accommodated
activity: vision, so the analogy proposed by his paint goes, is a kind neither to the Italian model of the window on the world nor to the
of touch. In La Dioptri.que (1637), Descartes illustrated vision (the Dutch model of the mirror or map of the world, for they are pro-
way we see, as distinguished from the mechanism of the eye) with a duced instead as new objects in the world. 19 There is, finally, one
reference to a blind man probing with a stick. The eye, he argued, further manifestation of touch in Rembrandt's works which is re-
is affected by light carried by the air just as the hand is affected by a lated to, but distinct from, those just noted: the prominence and
stick. "Seeing with sticks" was the notion of seeing proposed by activity of the painted hands . We are turning our attention now
Descartes's text and by the illustrations which accompanied it (fig. from the deployment of paint to its thematization in Rembrandt's
1.9). One does not assume that Rembrandt espoused any particular paintings.
theory of vision. But his paint surface, as well as the subject of some The hands of Bathsheba in the Louvre (figs. 1.12, 1.13) and
works, shows that he shared an interest in blindness and in touch those of the woman possibly representing Sarah, in Edinburgh
with those pursuing natural knowledge and in some measure for the (figs. 1.14, I. I 5), are exaggerated, almost grotesque in size. In the
same paradoxical reason-as a condition of attending to the nature Edinburg h painting Rembrandt has gone out of his way not to ob-
of seeing. It is not the eye as an image-making mechanism, but the serve that rule of sight that Gombrich illustrated with the bingo-ball
activity of seeing, that his paintings call attention to. His laying on effect: namely that we depend on certain constancies of knowledge
of substantial paint can be described as making something that is to "correct" the huge appearance of objects, such as hands, thrust
visible in this sense. 18 towards us. 20 But there is another factor. Our hands are large in rela-
Rembran dt's building up of paint and of objects in paint helps tionship to our bodies, and painters normally reduce their size to
explain the curiously flat or even absent space of his mature works. make their appearance less awkward or overbearing. As Bathsheba's
There is the awkwardly foreshortened or truncated bed in the Kassel large left hand resting on the cloth beside her makes clear, Rem-
24 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER ' S T OUCH 25

brandt refuses to make this adjustment. Why this empha'sis on (even if, as some experts believe, they were not executed by Rem-
prominent hands? First, because in Rembrandt's paintings to touch brandt's hand) .22
with the hand gives access to understanding. Here is an early por- Rembrandt investigates blindness or its symptoms in order to
trayal of an old woman reading a book (fig. 1. 16) . This is perhaps heighten our sense of the activity of perception . The father's eyes
the artist's mother , and it might be intended as a picture of the appear to be drained of sight, as if they were literally dimmed in
prophetess Hanna. It is not the identity of the woman that is our respect to the immediate contact offered by the laying on of hands. I
interest , but the way Rembrandt depicts her reading. She does not One could say the same thing about Rembrandt's fascination with
look at the book in front of her as much as she absorbs it through the blessings bestowed by the blind Jacob or Isaac. Blindness is not
her touch, almost as a blind woman today might move her hand invoked with reference to a higher spiritu al insight , but to call at-
across a page printed in the raised type of braille . The difference tention to the activity of touch in our experience of the world. Rem-
between this and a contemporary painting by Rembrandt's first brandt represen ts touch as the embodiment of sight : seeing done
pup il Dou is telling (fig. 1. 17) . Dou's woman looks, as we are in- with hands instead of with Descartes's sticks. And it is relevant to
vited to look with her , at both text and picture. Unlike Rembrandt's recall that the analogy between sight and touch had its technical
book, Dou's is there to be looked at. Rembrandt inten tionally leaves counterpart in Rembrandt's hand ling of the paint: his exploitation
the text, which is unillustrat ed, illegible. Hard as we look, we can- of the reflection of natura l light off high relief to intensify highlights
not make out a word. And what lies between us and the text is the and cast shadows unites the visible and the substantial.
finely worked hand. It is as if the hands, rather than the eyes, were To propose a rule about a single aspect of Rembrandt's varied
the instrum ents with which the woman reads. Houbr aken com- practice is of course to invite exceptions. But we might consider
plained about Rembrandt's lack of care with hands, adding that in how often the prominent hands in Rembrandt's paintings are not
portraits he either hid them in shadows or put in the wrinkled deployed in expressive gestur es, nor described-as Van Dyck's at-
hands of old women. The re is a contradiction here , because the de- tenuated and useless aristocratic ones are, for example-as a sign of
piction of wrinkled skin was one form that Rembrandt's attention to social class. How often are hands instead depicted as the instru ment
hands took. 21 with which we touch or grasp. Sometimes this is achieved by indi-
Human understand ing as well as textual understanding is promi- rection as in The Nightwatch, where Captain Banning Cocq's raised
nently marked in Rembrandt by the laying on of hands. One und er- hand stains, with a commanding shadow, the lemon yellow jacket of
stands why the biblical passage in which the old Jacob picks the his lieutenant (fig. 2. 1).
grandson he wishes to bless by touching his hand to the head proved We are so used to the familiar title of Aristotle Contemplating the
so fascinating to Rembrandt (fig. 1. 11). Love between man and Bust of Homer that we tend to ignore the fact that Rembrandt makes
woman in The Jewish Brid e is demon strated through a complex the philosopher's relationship to that great writer he so admired a
overlaying of very large hands (pl. 7). It is as if the hands had grown matter of touch (pl. 2, fig. 1.20 ) . While one oversized hand rests on
to these unusual dimensions in order to be sufficient to their task . his hip , fingering his heavy gold chain, the otherre sts on, in order
And hands are pivotal in the welcome offered to the returning pro- to feel and thu s to know, the marble bust. (The bust, like the shell,
digal son in the painting in Leningrad (figs. 1. 18, 1. 19). The father was an item from Rembrandt's own collection he put to studio use.)
faces his son and the viewer, but it is his hands resting in greeting The right hand takes on the creamy color of that bust it probes,
on the rough cloth of the son's garment which bind the forgiving while the other hand retains what is established, by contrast, as the
father to the penitent child . In works such as these, touch answers ruddier appearance of flesh. We happen to have evidence that this
to the desire for the demonstration of love between people. Or- particular gesture was noticed when the painting was new. The
dinarily, sight is necessarily out of touch because to see one must be work had been ordered by an Italian collector who also wanted
at a certain distance from what one views. Touch is more immediate some other paintings similar in kind to hang along side of it in his
than the distanced eye. The attendant figures who, in contrast to collection. He sent a drawing made after Rembrandt's painting to
the father, are looking on at the right demonstr ate this difference Guercino to order a companion piece. The Italian artist responded
 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 27

by suggesting that he supply a portrait of a cosmographer (a' por- tomical demonstration (fig. I .22). 25 We know the name of each of
trait of a man with his hand on a globe) to accompa ny what he took the men portrayed, even that of the convict whose corpse was used
to be Rembran dt's portrait of a"physiogn omist (one who stu dies hu- on this occasion. The extraordinary veracity with which Rembrandt
man nature through a study ofhuman features). Guercin o, in other conveys the pallor of death is matched by his care in depicting the
words, was struck by the gesture of the hand on the bust and fur- dissection. He follows the model of the portrait of Vesalius which
thermore read it as having to do with a partic ular form of know l- served as the frontispiece to his famous illustrated anatomical text.
edge- physiognomy. Tulp, like Vesalius, is depicted dissecting the muscle and tendon s in
It has been suggested that Remb randt's A ristotle is related to the forearm which serve to flex the fingers. It has only recently been
those familiar types of contem porary port raits which depict a man pointed out that while the doctor's right hand exposes the mus cles
with par t of his valued collection or perhaps a scholar or an artist and tendons, his left hand is raised in a gesture which demonstrates
with a bu st of an admired intellectual or artistic model. 23 But we their use. Tulp's left hand is not raised in a rhetorical gesture to ac-
might consider the A ristotle as Rembrandt 's version of a picture like company speech but to demonstrate that flexing of the fingers which
Dou's Doctor (fig. 1 .2 1), which, as it happens, was also painted in enables us to hold or grasp objects. He is in effect demonstr ating
1653. It is, in other words, a picture__£Q ncerned with_kn owledge or how we use our haI.!Q__]fig. 1 .23).
with the means by which we apprehend , the world. In taking the Why is Tulp in this pain ting demons trating the function of the
Aristotle to bei" physfognomist , Guercino saw it in such terms. hand? 26 I am going to suggest that in this painting Rembrandt is
Whatever one might take the nature of such knowledge to be, on concerned with the essential instrument of the painte r. But though
Rembrandt's account, a salient point is that apprehension of the I think that is true , it is rushing thin gs a bit to say it. For surely it
world is actively sought through touch . Aristotle's eyes, sha ed in a was Tulp, not Rembran dt alone, who thoug ht to have the grasping
characteristic Rem bran t manner, are not fixed on anything in the action of the hand made the center of the portr ait of his anatomical
external world . Lost in thought, perhaps, he is taken up with demonstration. There was good reason for Tulp to do this, and it
touch. 24 Dou 's doctor is portrayed as a man who understands the has to do not only with the model provided by Vesalius but also with
human condition throu gh sight alone. In this instance, he directs the highly regarded writings of Aristotle. According to Aristotle the
his eyes to the contents of a urine bottle-a substance whose ap- human hand was not a specialized instrument like the claw of a
pearance was taken then , as it is today, as offering a visual symptom predator or the hooves of a herbivo re. It was an instrument at a
of the body's health. Glancing away from the bottle, as Dou's doctor higher level, because it was not one instru ment but many. It was an
will do, we are also invited to look at the illustrated anatomy book instrument for using instrum ents. Man, wrote Aristotle, has hands
by Vesalius-a visible and legible volume which contrasts with the because he is the most intelligent anim al. He thought of it as the
pile of characteristically substantial but unreadable texts which physical counterpart of huma n reason , which was the instrument of
Rembrandt has piled at the left in his Aristotle. The very execution the soul. For it was with the instrume ntal use of reason and the
of Dou's painting - the clear surface not marred by a single visible hand, particularly in its pri mary feature-the prehens ile element
brushstroke-trusts to the look of visible things just as the doctor that is demonstrated here-that, according to Aristotle , man had
in the painting does. The alternative that Rembrandt's painting created civilization. If a painte r, Rembrandt, for examp le, had
offers with its pitted and raised paint and the thoughtful and touch- wanted to define his part icular profession, a profess ion that, be-
ing Aristotle is decisive. cause it was manual, had trad itionally needed defense against the
But Rembrandt's a peal to the hand and to touch is motivated by higher claims made for the intellectual liberal arts, what better way
more than a desire for physical activity and contact, strong though than focus upon the hand in Aristotle' s terms as the instrumental
that is. The hand, after all, is the instrument of his profession; it is sign of man's intelligenc e?
with the hand that a painter paints. Much has been written about There was, then , a mutua lity of int erest between Tulp, a doctor,
Rembrandt 's first important public commission in Amsterdam, his and Rembrandt, a painte r, in the invention of this portrait which, I
depiction of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp, praelector or lecturer in anatomy believe, led to the pictori al innovat ion of the prominent " demon-
to the Amsterdam guild of surgeons , to whom he is offering an ana- strating" grasp of Tulp 's left hand.
28 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 29

If Rembrandt had specifically thought of the painter's han'd in art-the deployment of light or the late brushwork-are construc-
this instrumental way, did he ever attempt to paint it? Perhaps he tive in nature.
did. And this could explain a particular feature of his Self-Portrait To summarize: we have seen that Rembrandt's substantial (or
in Kenwood (fig. I .24). There has been much discussion about how "rough") paint calls attention to itself as work done in the studio;
we might explain the two great circles that appear behind Rem- that touch is appealed to by the paint surface to represent the active
brandt on the wall. 27 I do not propose to add anything to that dis- apprehension of the world; that touch is enacted by the size and ac-
cussion, but I do want to call attention to the painter's hand - or to tion of the hands in his paintings. Touch supplements sight as the
what replaces his hand (fig. 1 .25). It is an assemblage which, as a primary vehicle of human contact, understanding, and love, and, in
medical friend remarked, looks almost like a prosthetic device. It particular with the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp and the Kenwood
was in 1660, at the age of fifty-four, that Rembrandt, who was a Self-Portrait (but it is probably a more general phenomenon) , Rem-
committed self-portraitist, first painted his self-portrait as a painter. brandt's fascination with the hand is related to the instrumental role
(I am ignoring the early painting in Boston which is less clearly a of the artist's hand in the making of pictures. It is, finally, just pos-
case of self-portraiture .) Rembrandt wears a painter's smock and sible that in the curious etching known as The Goldsmith we can see
rough, white cap. His right hand, the hand he actually painted how Rembrandt conjoined the hand's two roles- loving and paint-
with, is hidden, it is true, but his left hand has been replaced with a ing- in an image of the artist at his work (fig. 1 .26).
palette, brushes , and a maul stick. (X-rays show a certain amount of The tiny etching of 1655 depicts a goldsmith in his shop just put -
repainting, and they suggest that Rembrandt first put his materials ting the finishing touches to a figural group representing a woman
in the hand to the left, the hand in which they would have appeared (Charity, or Caritas) with two children. While his right hand works
if viewed in a mirror. ) It is, in fact, as if Rembrandt had constructed with the hammer to fasten the metal to its base, the artist lovingly
his hand out of the instruments that it employed for painting. The embraces the woman with a huge left hand. His fingers press up
hand of the painter is represented in what, following Aristotle's defi- against her thigh. Lest we doubt that this is meant as a gesture of
nition , we might call its instrumental use. Let us read Aristotle: embrace, note the way the goldsmith's cheek is bent to meet hers.
"T ake the hand, this is as good as a talon, a claw, or a horn, or again The embrace could be called familial. Thi s could be the portrayal of
a spear or a sword, or any other weapon or tool: it can be all of a man, his wife, and their children. But all the love and tenderne ss
these, because it can seize and hold them all," to which Rembrandt of the man, his embrace of the woman within the grip and caress of
the painter has now added it can be a palette, maulstick, and brushes , his hand, is bestowed on the statue he made . As an artist he bestows
and he has painted it as such. 28 his love not on a real family, but on a surrog ate one of his own
Leo Steinberg has written something remarkably close to this making.
about Picasso fashioning hands in the Three Musicians in Phila- It was a topos of the time that the artist 's engagement with his art
delphia: "He knows , or knew in 1921, that a man's hand may mani- was like the love of a man for his muse , his mistr ess, or, in some
fest itself as a rake or mallet , pincer, vise or broom; as cantilever or versions, his wife. In poems and paintings alike, this gives a certain
as decorative fringe .. .. " 29 We are accustomed to what we consider authority to the painter or writer in love. The analogy was often
to be bodily distortions in the work of a painter of our own century made a matter of substitution: the artist's love of art replaces the
like Picasso, and, indeed, in the medium of sculpt ure he produced love of other women in his life. And this was extended to a com-
assemblages of a similar type. Rembrandt also reconstructed the parison between the making of a work of art and the engendering of
body and shared a common purpose-to represent a particula r a child. In response to a priest who told Michelangelo it was a pity
function. The point is less to claim Rembrandt for the moderns , that he had not married so as to leave the fruit of his labors to his
than to argue the old-fashioned nature of the reconstructive art of children, Vasari has Michelangel o reply that his art is already a wife
Picasso. But the comparison to Picasso works both ways, since I too many and that his works are his children. Th e story found its
mean to suggest by it that many things that have been taken aspic- way into the north by way of Van Mande r (who ends his life of
torial devices intended to achieve expressive effects in Rembrandt's Spranger with it), and it was repeated by Hoogstraten .30
30 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 31

In Dutch paintings, artists commonly worked the analogy-art- guished from it. This was a determining aspect of Rembrandt's stu-
wife to precisely the opposite end. It is one thing to say one's muse dio operation. We shall return to it again in the chapters to follow.
is like or even replaces a wife, and quite another thing to consider There was, as far as we know, no group of this size cast in metal
one's wife to be one's muse. But the Dutch artist often depicts his in Holland at this date. (Rembrandt probably fashioned the Caritas
wife, sometimes even with his children, as such. There is a practical after a Beham engraving .) Why then did Rembrand t invent one?
basis for this-family members served the artist as models. But in Because it presents in miniature an image of what Rembrandt con-
addition to overlapping with this practice, self-portraits in the com- ceived his art as being. Painters and sculptors in Europ e had trad i-
pany of "real" or depicted wife and/or family also engage certain tionally vied with each other for pr aise. Painters, for their part, had
notions of art. The topos as we have it from Vasari and Michel- tried to equal sculptors by making figures within their paintings
angelo does not anticipate that domestication of art that we find in that were as solid and convincing as the thre e-dimensional works of
self-portraits with family members by Dou , Metsu, Mieris, Jan de the sculptor. In north ern Europe this took the special form of the
Baen, and others. Adriaen van der Werff even manages to extend painted replication of sculpture that we find on the exterior of altar-
this domestic representation of art into the artistocratic sphere. Be- pieces from Van Eyck to Rubens . Th e painters effectively trans-
decked with the gold chain awarded him for royal service, he in- formed sculptur e so that it served their aim of deceiving the eyes of
cludes a painting of his wife and daughter as Pictura and a Genius the beholder by representing the world in color and design on a flat
(?) in his S elf-Portrait of 1699, a second version of one he made for surface. Don't be sculptural, be painterl y and lifelike, was the mes-
the Medici collection of artists' self-portraits (fig. 1.27). For all the sage of Rub ens's brief treatise on the painter' s imitation of ancient
aura and imagery of the court, this painting is as much a tribute to statues. 33 Rembrandt, rather uniquely, tried instead to make some-
his wife and children, who seem all but alive despite their pictorial thing relieflike and solid out of painting. In the figure of the gold-
state, as to his art. There is a difference between art being related to smith with his statue he has accomplished his iconic aim. He is
love, and painting being bound up with and confirming marriage something of a sculptor manque, like Picasso. (This might account
and the household. One need not argue the point further, since for some of the satisfactions he found as a printmaker in working or
Rembrandt makes this difference clear. 3 1 "sculpting" the plates.) The statue that Rembrandt invents for the
Th e smock the goldsmith wears while he is working is like the artist to embrace in this etching is the answer to his desire, or, if not
one Rembrandt wears in his Kenwood Self-Portrait (and also, inci- the answer, a most explicit acknowledgment of it.
dentally, like that worn by Aristotle). But this etching is not a self- It is somewhat eccentric to attribute to a painter the desire to
port rait. Unlike many other Dutch artists, Rembrandt never de- make a real object out of a painting . But we have the evidence of
picted himself with wife and child . The closest he comes to it is in another Dutc hman, Mondrian, who is on record as having said that
this etching where he displaces love of family onto love of his own he wanted his paintings to have a "real existence." He tried to
art. It is unusual to find any acknowledgment of the misogynist po- achieve this by bringing the picture forward from the frame, mount-
tential of the topos: that art can serve an artist in place of a mistres s ing the painting on the frame so as to push it out into the viewer's
and that he (rather than she!) can then give birth to works of art. In space (fig. 1 .28). 34 It is not inconsistent with the desire for this kind
embracing the woman and her children as offspring of his own mak- of objective presence, that Mondrian's paintings sacrificed the tradi-
ing, Rembrandt illustrates the misogynist desire as it was so frankly tional pictorial illusion of both surface representation and depth.
uttered by Montaigne in his essay On the Affection of Fathers for their The distinctive format and facture of Rembrandt's late paintings-
Children, " I do not know whether I would not like much better to the life-size three-quarter-length frontally viewed figures worked up
have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the in thick pigments-can also be described as a record of a sacrifice.
muses than by intercourse with my wife." 32 Eros, as we find it in the Considering the phenomenon in historical terms, one could say that
Pygmalion myth (to which this work might also be related), is trans- Rembrandt's sculptu ral ambition plays back, or replays backwards,
formed into an exercise of male generativity. Art so represented is the account offered by Sixten Ringbom of the emergence of nar-
not coextensive with the household and domestic life, but distin- rative scenes in northern painting out of icons or sculpted reliefs. 35
32 CHAPTER ONE THE MASTER'S TOUCH 33

My aim has been to direct attention to the distinctive manncr of ings attributed to Rembrandt that we now know to have been done
Rembrandt's touch. Basing our account on one feature of his way instead by others under his impress-is remarkable testimony to
with his paint, we have teased out certain things about the formal the contrary. If Rembrandt's manner of painting hardly outlived his
and thematic presen ce of his paintin gs. Since the last century, a presence, the isolate self that he invented in paint did. The idio-
taste for Rembrand t has been a taste for the mysterious and the syncratic look of Rembrandt's paint with which we have been con-
evocative- the romantic legend of his life has been extended to a cerned entailed a claim to be distinguished, to stand apart , to be
romantic viewing of the art. Artists such as Soutine have been at- himself and, in the format of the mature paintin gs, to even consti-
tracted to Rembran dt. But the viewing of the Dutch master's works tute a self. This self was not forced on Rembr andt by the world
that we see in Soutine' s Flay ed Ox separates the expressive from the around him- as the romantic view of the lonely, rejected artist
construc tive aspects of the painted surface as Rembrandt never did would have it-but was very much his own invention. The place
(fig. 1 .29). The result is that while it might be thought that such where Rembrandt staged its invention was in the studio.
paintings look Rembrand t-like, Rembrandt in fact does not apply
the paint in this loose, expressive manner in any of his works . I used
the word "constructive " on purpose. For I think the idiosyncratic
invention of Rembrandt's late works is comparable to what Picasso
did in 1907- 10 (figs. 1.30, 1.31).
Rembrandt's final Se lf-portrait and Picasso's 1910 Portrait of
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler offer a common frontality. The image con-
fronts the viewer immediately and head-on. The darkness sur-
rounding the figure in Rembrandt's late portrait s is similar to the
well-known fading-out around a cubist image such as this. As Pi-
casso was to do after him, Rembrandt moved away from depicting ac-
tions to offer the act of painting itself as the performance we view.
In Picasso's case, this is a turn from depicting performers to under-
standing that he himself is the performer. A similar account could
be given of Rembrandt. In the works of both these artists, when the
narrative frame is sacrificed, so is the organizing authority of the
actual picture frame. Both artists assemble their images from the
center out and therefore have a certain problem at the four corners.
Both aim to capture the substance of the model before them. As
painters they are both sculptors manque. But while Picasso tried to
subdue the sculptor in his painting and, post cubism, made it a sepa-
rate and even a hidden enterprise, Rembrandt continued to press
sculptural ambitions on his painting. 36
The parallel with the cubist Picasso is unexpected, not only be-
cause of the time gap, but also because Rembrandt's pictorial in-
vention , though of this order , did not get taken up, as did aspects of
Picasso's cubism, to become the dominant style in the age to follow.
But despite the idiosyncracy of Rembrandt's painting , it would be
misleading to conclude that he lacked for understanding in his time.
The spread of his style-which is marked in the number of paint-
Rembrandt'sEnterprise
THE STUDI O AND

THE MA RK ET

S VET LA NA AL P ER S

THE UNIVERSITY OF

CHICAGO PRESS
 J'.' r-
N"D
b~3
R,28
SVETLANA ALPE ~ 1s p o essor of the history of TO MY PARENTS
art, University of California, Berkeley. EST ELLE AN D WAS SI LY

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 6o637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd ., London
Thames and Hudson Ltd ., London
© 1988 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1988
Printed in the United States of America

97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90 89 88 54321

Chapters 1- 3 are revised from the Mary

Flexner Lectures delivered at Bryn Mawr
College in the spring of 1985.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PuBLICATION DATA

Alpers, Svetlana.
Rembrandt's enterprise.
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 16o6- 1669-
Criticism and interpretation. 2. Rembrandt school.
3. Art, Dutch-Marketing . I. Title.
N6953.R4A88 1988 759.9492 87-16161
ISBN0-226-01514-9