Word: schama
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...Schama's heavy tome, some of whose content the author originally delivered as lectures at Harvard, makes every attempt to be a definitive work on the painter, and it succeeds. First and foremost it is a narrative of the life and work of Rembrandt van Rijn, although calling it a "biography" somehow sounds reductive. It is equal parts analysis of Rembrandt's painting, documentation of his life and history of 17th century Holland, so sections of the book can be read with profit by anyone studying the artist, his art or the social history of the times...
...between the Dutch Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens, the most popular artist of the previous generation and a court painter of the Spanish Habsburgs. A good chunk of this thick, richly illustrated book is about Rubens' background and family; Rembrandt himself is barely mentioned for an entire chapter. Schama compares paintings and history to show the anxious influence at work between Rembrandt and his older, more popular precursor. Rembrandt, Schama says, was the Great Dutch Hope, the painter whom Holland sought to "transform the physically unprepossessing specimens of the European dynasts... into so many Apollos and Dianas," just as Rubens...
...Rembrandt of Schama's book is a complex man, with hubris, greed and an enormous talent for portraiture. Early on he takes the monumentally cocky step of signing only his first name-no "van Rijn"-as if he knew his paintings would be studied for centuries to come. His understanding of humans and their personae was without parallel. Schama writes, "No painter would ever understand the theatricality of social life as well as Rembrandt. He saw the actors in men and the men in actors...
...title suggests, Schama finds special messages in the eyes of Rembrandt's subjects. He notes that in art education painters were taught to put special care into their depiction of the whites of eyes, yet in many of Rembrandt's works-Schama points to "The Artist in his Studio" (1629)-the eyes are dull, dark pits. "When Rembrandt made eyes," Schama says, "he did so purposefully." And so, in _Rembrandt's Eyes_ he continually returns to the haunting eyes in the artist's paintings...
...analysis of "Balaam and the Ass" (1626), for example, Schama notes how Balaam's eyes differ from previous depictions in other portraits. In the story from the book of Numbers, Balaam's donkey sees an angel and goes berserk. Previous painters, following the Dutch master van Mander's advice, had illuminated Balaam's eyes with shock, but Rembrandt is far more restrained...