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Rembrandt's life's work goes on digital display, restored as they were 400 years ago
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Jouke ter Hofstede of the Van Straaten printing company
mounts digital images onto boards to prepare them for an exhibit of images
of all paintings by Rembrandt in Boesingheliede, Netherlands, Thursday, June
25, 2009. The images will be displayed at an exhibition of images of all 317
known paintings, 285 etchings and more than 100 drawings by Rembrandt in
Amsterdam. The artworks are being reproduced in their true size and have
been digitally enhanced by one of the world's leading Rembrandt experts,
Ernst van de Wetering, to restore the color and detail they had when they
left Rembrandt's studio nearly 400 years ago. The exhibition will start at
July 5. |
AMSTERDAM (AP) — The life work of Rembrandt — all 317 known
paintings, 285 etchings and more than 100 drawings — go on display
next week in full-sized digital reproductions that attempt to
recreate the works as they emerged from the artist's studio rather
than as they exist today.
In some ways, the high resolution images are more authentic than the
real paintings, said Ernst van de Wetering, a leading Rembrandt
scholar who supervised the project.
Employing computer wizardry, pieces of canvas or panel that were
sliced off centuries ago have been patched back on. Colors are
restored to the vibrancy they had when they came off the master's
brush. Details hidden in darkness because of aging pigments emerge
into view.
"The Complete Rembrandt, Life Size" exhibition opens Sunday in the
former Amsterdam Stock Exchange building and runs through Sept. 7.
Not everyone is happy with the idea of passing off posters as true
art. But even Van de Wetering, who has examined much of 17th century
artist's work with x-rays and microscopes, said he discovered
details he had never seen before.
"I got surprises," he said, as he watched the folds of painted cloth
materialize on the computer screen and dark corners highlighted.
Organized chronologically, the exhibition brings together work from
more than 100 museums and collections around the world to offer
viewers "a walk through Rembrandt's mind," said the art historian.
It follows his 45-year evolution from young painter to possibly the
most famous master of his day, and the sudden leaps of inspiration
and conceptualization in between that jolt him to new levels.
Van de Wetering heads the Rembrandt Research Project, created in
1968 to verify whether disputed works were true Rembrandts. Since
then, it has disallowed about half the 600 paintings that once were
attributed to the Dutch master, identifying them as either works by
his students, copies by later admirers or deliberate forgeries.
The group of experts also has authenticated several previously
unknown Rembrandts.
Over 40 years Van de Wetering has learned to dissect a Rembrandt
into its smallest components, from the paint he used, the grounding
of the work, the grain in the wood from which he cut his panels and
the number of threads in his canvas.
Working with that knowledge and from contemporary copies by
students, Van de Wetering could reconstruct works like "The Night
Watch," arguably Rembrandt's most famous work, which has been
radically altered and which he calls "a ruin" of the original.
"It's a wreck," he said in an interview.
In the exhibition, a copy of The Night Watch — a 1642 group portrait
of an Amsterdam militia in colorful formal attire — as it is in
Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, stands next to a recreation of the
original. Over the years, the massive painting had been trimmed on
all sides, and two figures were cut completely from the left side.
The result moved the two central characters to the middle of the
canvas, destroying Rembrandt's intention to convey an image of
motion.
Van de Wetering reconstructed the original work using a small copy
painted by Amsterdam artist Gerrit Lundens seven years after
Rembrandt finished The Night Watch. The copy not only included the
pieces later lopped off but its colors had better retained their
brightness because it was painted on panel.
Van de Wetering worked with computer specialist Aehryan Hesseling to
alter high resolution photographs. The images were then printed and
mounted by the Van Straaten company, which specializes in billboards
and large-scale advertising.
The exhibit revives a 3-year-old debate about the value of seeing
copies of the full range of Rembrandt's work as compared with
viewing a few originals. The argument first arose during an exhibit
of 290 photographs — some of them poor quality — for Rembrandt's
400th birth anniversary.
Van de Wetering argues that the reproductions have the advantage of
stripping away the aura of awe viewers often have when they see an
original, which hinders their assessment of the work.
Axel Ruger, director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, complained
in 2006 that the organizers appeared to see no qualitative
difference between a reproduction and the real thing.
"Reproductions cannot convey anything of the wonderful
three-dimensional quality of Rembrandt's painted surfaces," Ruger
wrote at the time. A spokeswoman said the Van Gogh director has not
changed his mind, but declined to comment specifically about the
current exhibition.
Rather than duck the controversy, Van de Wetering reprinted Ruger's
complaints in an epilogue to the book accompanying the show.
He argues that Rembrandt made copies of his work, and had his
students make more copies, because he wanted a wider audience.
"Rembrandt would have been very happy if he had known we were doing
this," he said. "But the copies he made of his works are many times
worse than ours."
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"New Orleans Table: Paintings by Melissa Sarat" visual art review
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New art gallery opens in Ilfracombe with auction of lifeboat painting
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Gareth Thomas: Painting from the eye of the storm
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Mona Lisa Nude, Huh?
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Columbia Museum of Art to Unveil Freshly Designed Galleries in July
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