James Baquet

    The great Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), usually known simply as “Rembrandt,” was born the year after Sir Thomas Browne. He lived and worked during a period known as the “Dutch Golden Age,” covering most of the 17th century. During this time, the Netherlands was justly famous for its active world trade, its advances in science and military technology, and of course, its art. Other painters of the day included Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, and others, who together are referred to as the “Dutch Masters.”

    But none achieved the lasting influence of Rembrandt. Even modern photographic portraiture owes to him the technique called “Rembrandt lighting.” This uses a strong side-light, and can be identified by a triangle of light under the subject’s eye on the “dark” side.

    Rembrandt was born in Leiden (where Thomas Browne had studied medicine). He was the ninth child of a comfortably well-off couple. Around age 25 he relocated to Amsterdam, which was booming as a result of Holland’s trade. There he became a successful portrait artist. Three years later, he married; three of the couple’s four children died in infancy, and his wife died shortly after delivering the fourth, a son who survived to age 27. Rembrandt died about a year after his son. Because of Rembrandt’s bad spending habits and poor business decisions, this great master died in poverty, and was buried in an unknown grave.

    Rembrandt was known for painting portraits, including around 50 self-portraits throughout his life, as well as Biblical scenes using his Jewish neighbors as models.

    Two of his more famous works feature groups of men. One, commonly called “The Night Watch,” portrays a company of soldiers preparing to march out. Surprisingly, a little girl is seen to have penetrated to the center of the troop. The other is the beautiful but disturbing “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp,” showing a professor and a group of surgeons around a cadaver.

    In all, he left more than 300 paintings, many copies of his 290 or so etchings, and around 1,400 drawings still in existence today.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. not poor, at least middle-class

    2. a picture of a person’s face

    3. rightly, appropriately

    4. the condition of being poor

    5. growing quickly

    6. a dead body

    7. entered to the inside of something

    8. doctors who do operations on people

    9. the study of the structure of the body

    10. the condition of being a baby