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Rembrandt Reconsidered
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20377 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
2,587 Words |
| Author
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Jason Edward Kaufman
Jason Edward Kaufman is an art historian and critic based in
New York. |
For the past quarter century Rembrandt paintings have been disappearing at an astonishing rate. Is it organized crime? A terrorist plot? Bungled restorations? None of the above. The works in question have fallen victim to the vagaries of connoisseurship that no longer regards them to be bona fide Rembrandts.
A group of five eminent Dutch art historians is largely responsible. Heavily supported by the Dutch government, the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) has been examining supposed Rembrandts since 1968 and making pronouncements as to their authenticity. When the enterprise is complete more than a decade from now, it will have whittled down the Rembrandt supply from around 420 (according to Horse Gerson's 1968 catalogue raisonne) to around 280 an average of one in three getting thumbs down from the committee.
This phenomenon has caused no little consternation in the art world, where more than art scholarly egos are at stake; an affirmed Rembrandt is worth many times a rejected or questionable one. The rankled dissenters include curators, museum directors, collectors, and dealers, all with vested interests in the RRP's appraisals. And there has been a chorus of objections as well from art historians with no financial axes to grind.
It goes without saying that Rembrandit has been imitated and outright forged ad infinitum. The glut peaked in the Victorian era. But since the German art historian Wilhelm Bode's 1906 catalog listed 988 Rembrandts, here has been a steady diminution of the canon. In 1921, Kurt Valentiner recognized 744 autograph works; then in 1935 Abraham Bredius pared it down to around 630, followed by Kurt Bauch, who counted but 560 in 1966. With so little agreement as to what constitutes the real Mc. Coy the image of Rembrandt was a little hazy around the edges.
Enter the RRP to define its contours once and for all. And what would elevate their assertions above their predecessors?" Modern science. The team has implemented virtually all the available tools of science in the aid of art history. This inventory includes microscopic cross-sections of paint chips and a battery of X-radiographic, infrared reflectographic, and even neutron-activated autoradiographic imaging to show successive layers within the paint surface, gas chromatographic analyses of pigment composition, and dendrochronologic dating of the wood used as a support not to mention thread counting to pinpoint canvas sources.
Notwithstanding
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