Rembrandt

Hermensz van Rijn Rembrandt was mainly a painter. He represented the Netherlands during all the Renaissance era, because he was basically the only internationally famous Holland artist until the time of Vincent van Gogh in the late 1800s.

Rembrandt painted mostly people, not events. He liked to picture everyday people. When he painted events they were mostly Biblical events and mostly early, old testament, ancestors of the Israelites, like Jacob and Samson. He made lots of paintings of the “Saint family”. Most of his paintings are of clothed, not naked people.

Rembrandt painted probably the most self-portraits of all the Renaissance painters. He did this so that he could observe himself, both physically and emotionally.

In his early works you can discover the influence of Pieter Lastman, the artist’s teacher. These early paintings of his has lots of details which could distract the viewer from the main purpose of the picture.

The paintings and the sketches of his middle period shows more of his talent these are not so much detailed, but is still somewhat a little too detailed. A lot of his late works are considered classics. These are pictures of mostly biblical themes which shows that he was pretty spiritual at the last two decades of his life.