This is Rembrandt

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, also /-brænt/,Dutch: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)soːn vɑn ˈrɛin] (listen); 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. An unbiased and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the chronicles of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt’s works depict a broad range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, and biblical and mythological themes as with ease as animal studies. His contributions to art came in a time of good wealth and cultural triumph that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and open-minded and gave rise to important supplementary genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer of Delft, Rembrandt was as a consequence an covetous art squirrel and dealer.

Rembrandt never went abroad, but he was considerably influenced by the feign of the Italian masters and Netherlandish artists who had studied in Italy, like Pieter Lastman, the Utrecht Caravaggists, Flemish Baroque, and Peter Paul Rubens. After he achieved youthful triumph as a portrait painter, Rembrandt’s sophisticated years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an performer remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters.

Rembrandt’s portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate autobiography, in which the player surveyed himself without vanity and taking into account the utmost sincerity. Rembrandt’s foremost contribution in the archives of printmaking was his transformation of the etching process from a relatively other reproductive technique into a authentic art form, along past Jacques Callot. His reputation as the greatest etcher in the archives of the medium was conventional in his lifetime and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic even though he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, and his wider reputation was initially based upon them alone.

In his works he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt’s knowledge of the specific text, his incorporation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam’s Jewish population. Because of his similarity for the human condition, he has been called “one of the good prophets of civilization”. The French sculptor Auguste Rodin said, “Compare me later Rembrandt! What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! We should prostrate ourselves since Rembrandt and never compare anyone in imitation of him!”