Reading Rembrandt

In a series of close analyses of works by Rembrandt, Mieke Bal questions the traditional boundaries between literary and visual analysis

Though Rembrandt's study of the Bible has long been recognized, his interest in secular literature has been relatively neglected. In this volume, Amy Golahny uses a 1656 inventory to reconstruct Rembrandt's library, discovering anew how his reading of history contributed to his creative process. In the end, Golahny places Rembrandt in the learned vernacular culture of seventeenth-century Holland, painting a picture of a pragmatic reader whose attention to historical texts strengthened his rivalry with Rubens for visual drama and narrative erudition.

How do art and faith intersect? How does art help us see our own lives more clearly? What can we understand about God and humanity by looking at the lives of artists? Striving for beauty, art also reveals what is broken. It presents us with the tremendous struggles and longings common to the human experience. And it says a lot about our Creator too. Great works of art can speak to the soul in a unique way. Rembrandt Is in the Wind is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works and how each of them illuminates something about God, people, and the purpose of life. Part art history, part biblical study, part philosophy, and part analysis of the human experience, this book is nonetheless all story. From Michelangelo to Vincent van Gogh to Edward Hopper, the lives of the artists in this book illustrate the struggle of living in this world and point to the beauty of the redemption available to us in Christ. Each story is different. Some conclude with resounding triumph while others end in struggle. But all of them raise important questions about humanity's hunger and capacity for glory, and all of them teach us to love and see beauty. "The artists featured in these pages—artists who devoted their lives and work to what is good, true, and beautiful—remind us that we can, and should, do the same." —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well

With her mother dead of the plague, and her beloved brother newly married, Cornelia must manage her father's household, though he teeters on the brink of madness. She knows that among Amsterdam's elite circles, people are gossiping about her father's fading artistic genius--and about her, too. Yet there are two young men who seem unfazed by the slander- and very much intrigued by Cornelia. Set within the vibrant community of the 17th century Dutch Masters, I Am Rembrandt's Daughter is a moving coming of age story filled with family drama and a love triangle that would make Jane Austen proud.

Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word Image Opposition explores the potential for interdisciplinary methodology between literature and visual art. In a series of close analyses of works by Rembrandt works whose attribution is still challenged, but can still be considered within the context of this study-and texts related to those works, Mieke Bal questions the traditional boundaries between literary and visual analysis. Bal also studies Rembrandt's complex handling of gender and the representation of women in Rembrandt's painting. Although Reading Rembrandt's methods originate outside the history of art, it demonstrates nonetheless the author's sensitivity to the visual aspect of Rembrandt's work. The works by Rembrandt gain in depth and interest, but an original perspective of the role of visuality in our culture emerges, which ultimately has consequences for our views of gender, the artist, and the act of reading.

Roughness is the sensual quality most often associated with Rembrandt's idiosyncratic style. It best defines the specific structure of his painterly textures, which subtly capture and engage the imagination of the beholder. Rembrandt's Roughness examines how the artist's unconventional technique pushed the possibilities of painting into startling and unexpected realms. Drawing on the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl as well as firsthand accounts by Rembrandt's contemporaries, Nicola Suthor provides invaluable new perspectives on many of the painter's best-known masterpieces, including The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman, The Return of the Prodigal Son, and Aristotle with a Bust of Homer. She focuses on pictorial phenomena such as the thickness of the paint material, the visibility of the colored priming, and the dramatizing element of chiaroscuro, showing how they constitute Rembrandt's most effective tools for extending the representational limits of painting. Suthor explores how Rembrandt developed a visually precise handling of his artistic medium that forced his viewers to confront the paint itself as a source of meaning, its challenging complexity expressed in the subtlest stroke of his brush. A beautifully illustrated meditation on a painter like no other, Rembrandt's Roughness reflects deeply on the intellectual challenge that Rembrandt's unrivaled artistry posed to the art theory of his time and its eminent role in the history of art today.

Rembrandt's masterful Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter is unusual both as a history painting and as a portrayal of a nude. Instead of displaying a sumptuous body for the viewer's delectation, Bathsheba elicits our empathy. This collection of essays by six leading Rembrandt scholars examines its qualities from perspectives ranging from changing perceptions of female beauty and the nude, to technical analysis, and biographical and psychological analysis of the artist, the subject, and the viewer.