User:Johannes der Taucher/Rembrandt Kenwood

X-rays show Rembrandt had presented himself as working on a canvas suggested by the vertical line at the far right of the portrait. asdfjkl;

Chapman, H. Perry. Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity. Princeton University Press, 1990. 0691040613. 9780691002965.

Reviewing the literature that attempts to explain the pair of inscribed circles, Perry Chapman poses an “alternative reading” to the iconographic focus, which “ignore[s] the visual effect as a whole.”

Rather, Chapman writes, the Kenwood self-portrait “is concerned with practice. Not only does Rembrandt present himself in working attire in his studio, but his broad, insistent, rough technique calls attention to the painting process. The portrait reaffirms his identity as anchored in the mastery of his art.”

According to Jan Gerrit van Gelder, Chapman notes, the circles would be "17th-century cabalistic symbols representing the perfection of God”

“To read them as purely abstract forms,” however, “would be out of keeping with Dutch painting in general, and Rembrandt’s in particular,” writes Chapman.

Jan Emmans "reads them emblematically, ideal of painting as a combination of inborn talent, theory, and practice—ingenium, ars, and usus or exercitatio." Likewise, Chapman notes how Kurt Bauch and Henri van de Waal speak of "perfectly drawn circles." Chapman notes, however, that the circles are actually but "two partial circles—not the single perfect circle crucial to the anecdote. Moreover, the image of a steady drawing hand seems hardly the message of this work’s extreme painterliness.” ;lkj

On MAP, per Saskia Beranek, on the painting's page at Smarthistory:

Benjamin P. J. Broos and Jeanne Porter

"The problem with this interpretation, according to the detractors (who include Ernst van de Wetering and the Rembrandt Research Project) is that the circles are too far apart to represent the two circles of a map, and that the wrinkling and curling of maps on walls seen in other paintings is not present."

Home page at Kenwood:

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood/history-stories-kenwood/rembrandt-self-portrait/

114.3 x 94 cm.

English Heritage, Kenwood House

The Iveagh Bequest, London

Also need to cite Perry Chapman on the page for RvR self-portraits, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portraits_by_Rembrandt