The National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec has the honor of taking advantage of the renovations at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, to house 80 engravings by the legendary artist Rembrandt van Rijn, who still fascinates more than 350 years after his dead. Here are three that particularly attract attention.
“We are almost in the presence of a divine gift,” maintains feverishly the general director of the Museum, Jean-Luc Murray, during the media visit to the exhibition of Rembrandt’s works on Wednesday.
His mother as a role model
From his early twenties, Rembrandt, the penultimate of ten children, began using his mother as a model for his etchings; a chemical process which allows engravings on a copper plate to be transposed onto paper.
This engraving, on which we can see Rembrandt’s mother, is no bigger than the palm of a hand.
Photo Alexandre Caputo/Journal de Québec
The particularity with the engraving titled Head of Rembrandt’s mother with cloth headdress, looking down (1633); it is no bigger than the palm of a child’s hand. It is therefore not necessary to be a great connoisseur of 17th century art to appreciate all the finesse and precision required to create this tiny work.
The Three Crosses (1653)
In addition to his portraits, Rembrandt also excelled in art related to biblical myths. His engraving The Three Crosses represents the moment when Jesus dies crucified surrounded by his faithful and has something to appeal to even the most atheists, notably with its almost gothic style and the intensity of the contrasts between the shadows which surround Jesus and the light which covers him.
Certain versions of the work, all created by Rembrandt, were part of the collections of the prestigious Louvre Museum and were only accessible by appointment.
Reimagining Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve (1638)proves that Rembrandt was before his time. Rather than representing them as slender, pretty and full of grace, as was often the case at the time, he instead chose to engrave them worried, with their backs bent, and more in the pulpit.
With this choice, made to image the consequences of original sin, Rembrandt attracted the wrath of the Church; shows that even if we go back almost 400 years, art has always had the power to shock and provoke a reaction.
A future Quebec-Rotterdam project?
The exhibition of 80 Rembrandt engravings at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec is enhanced, among other things, with works by Quebec artists who were inspired in one way or another by the latter’s work. Once the renovations are completed at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, the institution’s director of traveling exhibitions, Sandra Tatsakis, says she is very open to reversing the roles to welcome works from home in Rotterdam.
“The way the Museum here looks at our Rembrandt collection gives us a new perspective, so we will definitely want to continue this collaboration when the work is finished, by 2029,” she mentions, in an interview with Le Newspaper.
Rembrandt’s works are exhibited at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec from April 25 to September 2.
