With Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings, Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen offer readers a view at 329 works made by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) during his lifetime, in what is known as the Dutch Golden Age aka the 17th century.
In addition to great reproductions of all the paintings and detailed catalogue entries regarding all the works, including the relevant literature, the book contains introductions regarding Rembrandt’s early years in Leiden (1606-1631), with information about his family background, his teachers, early self portraits and more; his first years in Amsterdam (1631-1639), marked by his close professional connection with Hendrick Uylenburgh and his marriage to Saskia Rommertsdr. (van) Uylenburgh (1612–1642), who became his model and muse; his period with works of illusionism and his artistic reorientation (1640-1651), including information about the portraits he made, including his famous group painting The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq painting, better known as The Night Watch, information about the transition and reorientation in the years after “The Night Watch”, during which Rembrandt reached the peak of his fame and material prosperity; as well as a chapter about his late work until his death in Amsterdam (1652-1669), including information about his financial problems starting in 1653 and his bankruptcy in 1656, and details about Titian as an important source of inspiration for Rembrandt.
Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel, Rudie van Leeuwen come to the conclusion that it seems unlikely that Rembrandt strove – like Rubens – to become a cultivated gentleman and courtier. They claim that, instead, it was rather his ambition to go down in history as a great artist. According to the authors, unlike his former apprentices Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol, Rembrandt van Rijn demonstrated a remarkable lack of respect towards the rich and powerful. His artistic independence was important to him, and the countless conflicts with his clients reveal that he would brook no criticism or interference.
The authors stress that Rembrandt searched unceasingly and restlessly for new solutions to the artistic problems which he was working on at any time, such as the effect of light and shadow, the arrangement of space or the observation of his own surroundings. As a result, during the course of his long career the artist continually changed his style, his use of colour, his technique and his choice of subject matter.
Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel, Rudie van Leeuwen: The Complete Paintings, TASCHEN, 2025, hardcover, 25 x 34 cm, 4.12 kg, 744 pages with reproductions of the 330 paintings made by Rembrandt we know about and several essays. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and order the English book from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
Page 73: Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with a Gorget, c. 1629, oil on panel, 38.2 x 31 cm; monogram top right: RHL [f ?] (visible only with technical aids) Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. 391. Photo copyright © Germanisches Nationalmuseum/TASCHEN Verlag.
The catalogue entry regarding Self-Portrait with a Gorget specifies that the bust-length portrait with the upper body turned to the right shows the young Rembrandt. He is wearing a gorget (iron collar) over a dark garment. A striking feature is the long lock of hair (lovelock) next to the left half of his face and falling onto his shoulder. In this portrait, Rembrandt has put himself in the role of a young, aristocratic soldier (de Winkel 2006, pp. 138–141). Since the late 19th c., this Nuremberg self-portrait has been deemed a copy of a version in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Its status as not authentic was renewed in 1982 in the first volume of the Corpus (p. 229). Grimm (1991, pp. 24–28) was the first to clarify the relationship of the two versions in Nuremberg and The Hague, basing his research on a stylistic analysis and the use of the X-rays. For instance, the X-ray of the self-portraitin Nuremberg shows pentimenti in the contour line of the shoulders, the chin, the nose and particularly the lock of hair falling onto the brow. These changes under the surface layer were done while the painting was being created and argue against attribution to a copyist. Meanwhile, the X-ray of the painting in The Hague shows no pentimenti and it corresponds with what is seen on the surface. Thus the copyist had the finished original in front of him and accordingly had no reason to make changes while painting. Based on the direct comparison of the two paintings done in 1998 in Nuremberg, infrared reflectography showed extensive underdrawings in the picture in The Hague, but not in the Nuremberg version. This result confirms Grimm’s analysis and demonstrates that the Nuremberg picture has to be the original.
Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel, Rudie van Leeuwen underline that, unlike his contemporaries, Frans Hals (1581/85–1666) and Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), the two other great artists of the Golden Age of Dutch painting, whose fame faded relatively quickly after their death, to be rediscovered in the 19th century only, Rembrandt and his work never vanished into obscurity.
With The Night Watch, Rembrandt van Rijn had created a work which became the epitome of the golden age of civic culture in the Northern Netherlands and a symbol of the striving for independence in the fight against Catholic Spain.
Rembrandt’s paintings, drawing and etchings reflect the new self-image of the burghers and rulers alike who helped the young emerging republic to political and economic power and prosperity. Rembrandt’s works inspire and fascinate artists, art specialists and art lovers beyond the Netherlands and beyond the boundaries of culture.
Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen write that already Rembrandt’s contemporary Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), the learned art-loving secretary of the Governor Frederik Hendrik (1584–1647) had expressed the wish that Rembrandt should draw up a catalogue of his extensive oeuvre for the generations to come – in vain. The first catalogue of Rembrandt’s etchings was published in Paris in 1751 by the French art dealer Edmé- François Gersaint (1694–1750). The first catalogue of Rembrandt’s paintings followed only in 1836, published by the Englishman John Smith (1781–1855).
Pages 108-113: Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, 1632, oil on canvas, 169.5 x 216.5 cm, The Hague, Mauritshuis. Photo copyright © Mauritshuis/TASCHEN Verlag.
According to the catalogue entry, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp was Rembrandt’s first group portrait and hitherto his most important commission. The Amsterdam guild of surgeons had organised anatomic presentations as early as 1555, during which the lecturing professor of anatomy dissected the corpse of an executed criminal. Nicolaes Tulp (1593–1674) was invested with this function between 1628 and 1650 and gave nine such lectures. In 1632, Tulp, along with several guild members, sat for Rembrandt. Rembrandt was the first to portray a praelector demonstrating a dissection.
In the present book’s Preface, Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel, Rudie van Leeuwen stress that the publications of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP, see Corpus I–VI, 1983– 2015) represent the most thorough and extensive presentation of the paintings associated with Rembrandt to this day.
The present book targets a broad reading public in search of clearly presented information on the life and work of Rembrandt based on the latest academic research. It aims to provide an overview of the artist’s entire oeuvre by means of high-quality, mostly large-format illustrations.
Pages 242-243: Rembrandt’s Danae, 1636–1643, oil on canvas, 185 x 203 cm, St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Photo copyright © The State Hermitage Museum/TASCHEN Verlag.
According to the catalogue entry, Danae is Rembrandt’s largest female nude. The painting portrays the daughter of Acrisius, the ruler of Argos. When an oracle prophesied to Acrisius that one day he would be killed by his own grandson, he locked up his only daughter in a brass tower. Nonetheless, Danae became pregnant during her captivity when the supreme deity Jupiter, in the shape of a shower of golden rain, forced his way through the barred window. A boy was born, Perseus. The king had them both shut up in a chest and thrown into the sea. The wooden chest didn’t sink, however, but drifted towards the island of Seriphos, where they were freed by the fisherman Dictys.
Rembrandt’s Danae is lying with her body obliquely turned towards the viewer; the pose corresponds to Orazio Gentileschi’s Danae of 1623 in the Cleveland Museum of Art to the extent that she, too, appears with one leg resting over the other, supports herself on her left arm, and holds her right arm up (Tzeutschler Lurie 1975). Rembrandt may have known Annibale Carracci’s Danae of around 1605 (through a copy, etching or drawing), which provided the impetus for Gentileschi as well.
This and much more can be discovered in Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel, Rudie van Leeuwen: The Complete Paintings, TASCHEN, 2025, hardcover, 25 x 34 cm, 4.12 kg, 744 pages with reproductions of the 330 paintings made by Rembrandt we know about and several essays. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and order the English book from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
The catalogue’s front cover shows a detail of Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, 1661, oil on canvas, 91 x 77 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, bequest of Mr and Mrs De Bruijn-van der Leeuw, Muri, Switzerland.
In the catalogue entry, we can read that, in Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, the light falls from above onto Rembrandt’s wrinkled brow and the masterfully painted turban, which consists of a few strokes of white and yellow paint drawn wet-in-wet. The brown coat and St Paul’s traditional attributes, the sword and the scroll, are in deeper shadow and only recognisable at second glance. It is questionable whether the probable first owner, the prominent Parisian collector Everhard Jabach (1618–1695), recognised the Apostle in this work at all. According to his inventory of 1696, he saw the painting primarily as a self-portrait of the artist.
This book review is based on Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings. For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations in this review are not put between quotation marks.
Book review of Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings added on May 16, 2025 at 15:38 German time. Detail added at 15:51.
