[.ca] Rembrandt's Eyes (ISBN 0679309551)

From Amazon.com:
The great 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn left us so many arresting self-portraits, painted at every stage in his eventful life, that his distinctive face and bearing are a familiar part of the 20th-century cultural landscape, a recognizable presence in galleries across Europe and North America. Nonetheless, the artist himself remains an enigma. Rembrandt was a notoriously difficult man and an inveterate risk taker in life and art: his aspirations to a grandiose Amsterdam lifestyle in the heyday of his popularity as a painter of portraits and large-scale historical works bankrupted him, and he died in relative poverty. His personal effects and treasured collection of paintings and natural rarities were sold off and dispersed, leaving the historian with a tantalizingly scant body of fragmentary records around which to build a convincing biography. In Rembrandt's Eyes, Simon Schama--the leading historical craftsman of our era, with a career-long commitment to Dutch history--succeeds with consummate skill in bringing the heroic painter of such masterpieces as The Night Watch and Portrait of Jan Six vividly to life. Returning to the bustling Dutch world with which he first made his reputation in the bestselling Embarrassment of Riches (1987), Schama re-creates Rembrandt's life and times with all the verve and panache of a historical novelist--while never for an instant losing his scrupulous grip on recorded fact and detail. The telling surviving fragments of archival information about Rembrandt's personal and professional history are skillfully embedded in a rich, dense tapestry of the commercial whirl and political hurly-burly of the 17th-century Low Countries--a divided territory, split between the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the contested powers of the Spanish Hapsburgs and the Dutch Republic--with the tentacles of the tale reaching into the most unexpected shadowy corners of European love and war, aspiration and intrigue. Rembrandt's Eyes is, in fact, two biographies for the price of one. From the outset, Schama contrasts the life of Rembrandt with that of his older, equally talented countryman Peter Paul Rubens, whose meteoric rise and sustained success as a society painter forms a revealing contrast with Rembrandt's unhappier relationship with fame and fortune. The comparison is a telling one. Where Rubens furnishes the wealthy and powerful with glorious reflections of, and visual foils for, their social and political aspirations and glory, Rembrandt can never resist testing the envelope of taste and stylistic acceptability. His challenge to his clients to embrace the shock of his painterly experiments with technique, texture, and composition ultimately produced his downfall. The Amsterdam town council took down his The Oath-swearing of Claudius Civilis, rolled it up, and returned his masterpiece to him to be cut down in an attempt to sell it to a suitable buyer. This is a gorgeous book to own, too. Rembrandt's Eyes is printed on heavy, high-gloss paper and lavishly illustrated throughout in full color. The double-page color spreads of the most memorable of Rembrandt's works will take readers' breath away. But above all, this is narrative history at its very best, a page-turner and an adventure story that will make the reader laugh and cry by turns in the time-honored tradition of masterly writing. --Lisa Jardine

luminescent portrait of the artist and the age:
1629 -- the 60th year of the war for the Netherland. 128 thousand 777 men are under arms for the Dutch Republic .Prince Huygens, Rembrandt's benefactor, deciphers intercepted dispatches in the Prince of Orange's headquarters at Hertogenbosch. In Calvinist controlled Leiden 25 year old Rembrandt takes to portraying himself in armour. By 1631, when Rembrandt relocates to Amsterdam, the city's competing churches have come to a grudging accomodation. Despite the fractious political climate the city is a hot bed of manufacture and trade with the Orient. The savour of spices and silks, the rhythms of urban industries-- cloth fabrication., paper making, gem cutting, weapons forging, chimes through its neighborhoods. The artist thrives for a time in the vibrant economic climate. His pictures of prosperous burghers (and of course, himself) and religious scenes ingrain an exotic, cross cultural vocabulary and intrigue. Schama's analysis of the paintings is as scholarly as his depiction of the historical forces which were shaping them, in a Europe ripped by religious war. He looks also into the unsettled ambition embedded in Rembrandt's artistry. No major artist of his time or since has painted so many self portraits, in so many guises. No other artist absorbed more of the texture of his time and place. His influences were political, theological, social as well as aesthetic and developed into an idiosyncratic genius. Rembrandt's eyes as the author notes, provide a lens into these turbulent times and the passions of the artist. Twenty years from conception to print, Schama's opus spans its subject with a detail as fine as the lace on one of the artist's collar pieces. The author contrasts Jean Paul Rubens's ethereal idealism to Rembrandt's earthy colloquialism as metaphor for the political divisions of the times. Rembrandt was treading new ground in art. The compassionate consideration of human dilemmas and blemishes was a rebellion against the politicization of art in a time when painting was dogmatic and polemical. Rembrandt's tactile accouterments, lustrous colours, give an eidetic quality to metal, fabric or paper. The works had plural focal points producing a visual dynamic. The creamy pallor of irradiated faces are juxtaposed against some intricately detailed artifact-- lace, gemstone, coral, armour-- and those against props providing subtle sub-texts. They are bathed in an illogical light which seems to emanate rather than reflect from its characters. A narrative and cosmopolitan bustle energizes his artwork. 'The Repentant Judas', is one the best studies of the artist's ability to synthesize surreal contexts and intensely expressive figures into a cohesive spirituality. Schama spends 12 written pages on that magical evocation of purposeful community 'The Night Watch'. 'Two Old Men Disputing' shows Rembrandt's preoccupation with representing age and decay in dignified elegance. He had, though, had no talent for business or orderly finances. He was a compulsive accumulator and a mark for bad investments. That would eventually impoverish him even as his fame became well established. This was not lost in his later portraits, more abstract and rendered with a pensive, sombre defiance. The stern expressions of the 'The Sampling Officials' could well be the those of his creditors. Some transcendence reasserted itself in his final works, most remarkably in vital mysteries of 'The Jewish Bride' and 'Simeon and the Christ Child' Schama writes objective prose, with an impressive command of his subject. This is no esoteric meditation. It is a exhaustive study of the development of a craft and of the society that spawned it. The book is a beautifully composited coffee table book with a distinctive literary and historical flavour. Schama has produced one of the great artist biographies of all time, and a depiction of an age, as any age is most clearly represented by its art.

Tribute To Rembrandt, And A Gift To Readers From The Author:
In a time when readers are inundated with books that are brilliant pieces of, "gifted compression", which are as trite as they are brief, and when many books are masquerading as bad screenplays of movies we have already seen. A marvel the likes of, "Rembrandt's Eyes", penned by Mr. Schama arrives as a worthy descendent of Guttenberg's Press. This book lacks two traits that generally have kept me away from this type of work; it lacks pretense, and affectation. If you love art and history this Author provides both, and together with his eloquent prose he does well by Rembrandt with hundreds of glossy illustrations that are stunning. The explanations of specific pieces are detailed and as lengthy as they need to be. Any attempt to abbreviate what Rembrandt put in to his works, whether major or minor, would be foolish, futile, and a disservice, both to the Artist and the reader. A full two-page spread of "The Nightwatch" will take your breath away. This image will do so in part by what the Author relates about the work, the history leading up to it, the people portrayed, Rembrandt's methods, and then you turn the page and find a work that can only be described in superlatives. The Author has a talent for the theatrical. He brings you along with delightful, readable prose, he educates, and then he pulls aside the curtain to see your reward. And this is not only Rembrandt, but also Rubens, this is a 17th century book of History. As the word renaissance may be applied to an individual of varied talents, the word equally applies to this effort. The construction, and quality lavished on the book itself, is rapidly becoming extinct with the books found at the local superstore. Decades from now this volume will still be readable and intact, long after books of lesser construction and content are browning into obscurity. 700 pages sounds like a lengthy read. Drop this book on your foot and you will read the rest with your foot in a cast. But the latter may not be as bad as it sounds as the more time you spend with this work, the more delighted you will be. I could not recommend this book more highly, simply brilliant!

GUARANTEED, this one never goes out of style!!!:
Reading,or even browsing,this huge achievement simply overwhelms. Now it's obvious that all old masters books are immortal (especially if they have pictures) since the works have already passed the time test. But Mr. Schama's REMBRANDT's EYES must surpass just about every old master book in every way. It's one of those works that makes you glad we live in a society that can mass produce this kind of thing!!If you're an expert (which I am definitely not),I'll bet you'll totally agree with me. If you're a skeptic,or even a beer guzzling barhopper,you should still buy this book. Browse,read the author's insights,and be enthralled that a fellow like Rembrandt existed 350 years ago. For he is like Shakespeare,a monumental genius,born about 40 years after the Bard.But as a painter, he is a heck of a lot more accessible.His art is universal,no translations required,and no Cliff Notes either! Accompanied by beautiful photos,and brilliant commentary on many of his great works, you can buy this now,and know it will give you pleasure at the amazing creativity of a universal genius,even in old age! BTW, the artist's self portraits are only many of the wonders here,and they do show him in his older years.

Artistic insight:
One of my favorite paintings is "The Polish Rider" purportedly by Rembrandt. A few years ago , I read a disheartening article in The New Yorker Magazine about a panel of international Rembrandt experts who had decided Rembrandt did not paint "The Polish Rider." Later that same year, I was in Amsterdam and had an opportunity to visit the Six House and the painting of Jan Six by Rembrandt. I had a long conversation with the young art critic who was the curator/guide at the house. He assured me the Rembrant panel was correct in their assumption that "The Polish Rider" had not been painted by Rembrandt. I suggested whether or not Rembrandt painted it, it is a fabulous painting, and I asked this young man if he had ever seen the painting--he had not. After visiting the Six House, I sat outside on a bench with one of the gardeners and he told me how he felt the day he saw U.S. paratroopers dropping from the sky to save the Netherlands from the Nazis. He said his faith had been restored that day but he would not have belived it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. I hope it doesn't sound too trite to say that reading Schma's book restored my faith in my own opinion. Schama says he believes Rembrandt did indeed paint "The Polish Rider" and thereby places himself at odds with a formidable group of experts. Schama also presents empirical evidence why he beieves these experts are wrong. But you be the judge. Form your own opinion. Go to New York, visit the painting, and look into the soldier's eyes. I think you will agree who painted this masterpiece. But first, take the time to read Schama's book.

An Artistic Duel of the Highest Order:
As usual Schama writes brilliantly on a great subject and a great painter.His prose is lucid,beautifully composed and highly enjoyable. He certainly succeeds in bringing the master of Rijn to life and there is great analysis of the paintings-and there are some simply stunning portraits-like the one of his wife 'Saskia in a Red Hat'-I really can't get over how beautiful this painting is.In addition we also get an equally vivid portrait of Peter Paul Rubens and the cornerstone of the book is Rembrandt's continuous dialogue and competition with his artistic adversary-Rubens all colour and surface finish-Rembrandt the master of dark, monumental browns and blacks,effortlessly bringing his subjects to life.Rembrandt emerges as the better painter but I did find this duel absolutely gripping-in particular be prepared to be moved as I was by Rembrandt's incredible reponse to Rubens's 'The Supper at Emmaus'-never has such apparent sparsity in a canvas said so much. I wouldn't hesitate over this book-my only little niggle is that sometimes Schama's immense knowledge of Dutch culture sometimes clutters the narrative-but this is a very minor point-his analysis of the paintings is simply magnificent.