Rembrandt van Rijn, Scholar in His Study

For there will be hard data and they will be hard to understand For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question For there will be the arts and some will call them soft data whereas in fact they are the hard data by which our lives are lived A Valediction " T he " ugly and plebeian face by which he was ill-favored, was accompanied by untidy and dirty clothes, since it was his custom, when working, to wipe his brushes on himself, and to do other things of a similar nature " (1), wrote Tuscan biographer Filippo Baldinucci about Rembrandt van Rijn. Though impatient with social conventions and lackadaisical with his own appearance, the artist became known for his impeccable rendition of character and sympathetic view of humanity in his portraits and historical paintings. Rembrandt was born 400 years ago, during a period of unprecedented prosperity and peace in his native Holland. The son of a miller and a baker's daughter, he was, it was said, " of a different flour " (2). The eighth of nine children, he nonetheless received academic encouragement, attended Latin school, and entered the University of Leyden at age 14. Soon he left academic pursuits to become appren-ticed to local painter Jacob van Swanenburgh, who worked in the tradition of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), and to study in Amsterdam under renowned history painter Pieter Lastman, who influenced his choice of biblical and mythologic subjects. The greatest genius of what came to be called Holland's golden age, Rembrandt never traveled abroad. Instead, he absorbed influences indirectly, mostly from the followers of Caravaggio, the Italian master known for the originality of his realism and the use of light and dark (chiaroscuro) to convey intensity and drama (3). Rembrandt embraced the technique early, adapted it to his own boldly experimental application of paint and empathetic treatment of the world, and used it throughout his prolific career. Light and shadow became his vehicle for interpreting the human personality , establishing focus, creating mood and feeling, and transporting the viewer beyond the tangible world. Exuberant self-confidence, native brusqueness, and general aversion to compromise, qualities that lent uniqueness and interest to his art, at times had a deleterious effect on Rembrandt's popularity with art patrons. " After it had become commonly known that whoever wanted to be …