Stylistic features of the 1630s: the portraits

Abstract

Following the experiments that in the tronies — including the self-portraits — from the previous years in Leiden had led to very divergent results², Rembrandt emerges in 1631 as an accomplished portrait painter with his own approach to the genre. The various standard types of portrait may well have provided him with a point of departure; but the individual nature of his portraits from the 1630s does not seem to be wholly explainable either by his earlier essays at the subject or by the tradition current in Amsterdam such as one sees embodied in the work of a usually routine-bound portraitist such as Nicolaes Eliasz. (1590/1–1654/56), or of a more varied and interesting artist such as Thomas de Keyser (1596/7–1667). One has rather to assume that, in an entirely personal way, Rembrandt gave form to a new idea of what portraiture was about, an idea that was in the air around 1630. Precisely at that moment Constantijn Huygens — admittedly with all due deference — described the stereotype portrait formula of Van Miereveld and Van Ravesteyn as out-of-date in its simplicity and trueness-to-life.

A chapter on the history from the 1630s will be included in Volume III.