Rethinking Rembrandt

Why rethink Rembrandt? The ten essays in this volume depart from the recent focus on Rembrandt attributions by posing new questions about Rembrandt's art. The book is a forum for new ideas and an opportunity to present innovative, even speculative perspectives that might broaden the frame of reference for Rembrandt studies. Each paper takes a different vantage point, focusing on distinctive features, moments, conditions, or themes in Rembrandt's art. Scholarship has greatly enriched and complicated our understanding of Rembrandt's artistic achievement, his pictorial sources and approach to narrative, his social and professional status, and his changing critical fortunes. But this engagement with an essentially irretrievable past is a dynamic process that continually generates new paradigms of inquiry while inevitably leaving some questions unanswered. The authors bring a historically nuanced perspective to Rembrandt that in no way diminishes his authorial significance or the unique status of his art.