Rembrandt van Rijn

Paper Summary:

After providing a brief overview of his life, this paper examines five works that demonstrate something of the range of his extraordinary talent and illuminate his almost preternatural ability to depict the condition of the human heart and soul whether his own in the many self-portraits he created or in other in the series of studies that made him one of the most popular portrait artists of Amsterdam in his own time.

From the Paper:

"Rembrandt himself would no doubt have been very pleased to have found out how dominant his own reputation has remained, for he was not an overly shy or modest artist. His life was in fact (especially when he was younger) defined in large measure by his ambition. He wished to be an artist whose work would in time come to rival that of other great Dutch artists such as Peter Paul Rubens. He wished not only to be a fine artist but also a famous one, and while he of course succeeded in achieving the first during his lifetime he in many ways failed to achieve the second. For while he was in demand for many years as a portrait-painter, by the end of his life he had lost many of his former patrons."

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