Tuesday, March 19, 2024 -
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Rembrandt at 350

Setting aside the somewhat mystical human penchant to remember great people or decisive events only on even-numbered anniversaries, the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death is as good a time as any to recall the artistic, humanistic and Jewish sides to him.

If anyone ever disproved the popular but entirely misleading axiom that “no one is irreplaceable,” Rembrant, indeed, was irreplaceable. Proof enough: No one in the last 350 years has approached his unique form of artistic power, his astonishing use of light and shadow in everything from the human visage to neck lace. No one has approached his capacity to bridge generations, cultures and religions, his reaching out from his own humanity to touch that of his viewers. No one has approached his deep insight into Biblical figures, a steady focus of interest of Rembrandt’s that carried over into his affirmative relationship with the living Jews of his time, when Jews were considered pariahs.

No less appropriate for a remembrance 350 years after Rembrandt  died is the fickleness of “legacy.” Politicians and others speak of their “legacy” and seek to create it and shape it. Vanity is the least misguided characteristic in this futile gesture. At the time of his death, Rembrandt’s star was fading. He had passed his moment, it seemed; younger artists were emerging, pushing his work aside. Needless to say, the art of Rembrandt has continued to speak to countless people, generations and cultures. What may well seem be someone’s legacy, or the lack thereof, is a but a fleeting phantom. It is a person’s actions and productivity as seen through the ages that determine a legacy, not a self-sustained exercise in ego during one’s lifetime.

The great art of Rembrandt, at least the art produced at the end of his life, bespeaks another enduring characteristic, though less well known. Rembrandt outlived his wife and his son, both cherished. His late art may project a certain sadness, but the much more remarkable characteristic of his late art is that it exists at all. He did not let his personal tragedies, the reversal of his material fortunes or his own physical decline deter him from his great passion to lend beauty to this world, so often corrupted by the distortions of attitude and action that the human race has been heir to.  Against  war, humiliation, discrimination and suffering, Rembrandt created an alternative universe of color, light and shape enwrapping deeply empathetic and sympathetic human beings. Rembrandt evokes a different world, a higher world, a more refined world, a world of purity of thought, a spiritual world yet also a wholly human world of love or difficulty or loss, whose depiction in oil on canvas never left his desire.

Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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