THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR Authenticating Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries Anna Tummers Amsterdam University Press CHAPTER i Attributing Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings: Developments since 1945 The Van Meegeren Scandal: A Turning Point Attributing old master paintings is one of the most difficult tasks that art historians have taken upon themselves. Moreover, decisions in these matters tend to carry a lot of weight, especially when there is a chance that a painting is by a well-known artist. Connoisseurs put their reputation on the line when deciding about such matters. Also, the difference in price between an authentic old master painting and a work 'in the manner' of such a master can amount to millions of dollars.1 Moreover, a new or changed attribution can have dramatic consequences for our understanding of art history, as occurred in the Van Meegeren forgery case. Almost immediately after the Second World War, art historians and laymen alike began to question with unprecedented force the ability of experts in seventeenth-century Dutch art to attribute paintings. Their skepticism was the result of a remarkable lawsuit in 1945-47, the Van Meegeren case, a turning point in the history of modern connoisseurship. During this trial, the painting Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus, which was widely celebrated as one of Vermeer's best paintings, turned out to be a forgery (fig. 2). As a result, the idea that Vermeer (1632-75) had expressed a 'deep religious emotion' in this work, a sentiment not often encountered in the artist's paintings, became instantly obsolete. In 1937 tne piece nad been 'rediscovered' by the well-known art historian Abraham Bre-dius (1855-1946), and the Boymans Museum, as it was then called, had been quick to purchase it. Bredius himself helped out by donating 12,000 guilders towards the acquisition. Although Bredius had initially had some doubts about the provenance and attribution of the painting, he had concluded that it was authentic' after completing a brief background check on the seller and closely inspecting the painting in July 1937.2 He subsequently wrote an article about the piece for the prestigious art-historical monthly The Burlington Magazine, in which he celebrated it as Vermeer's best work.* Other experts followed suit.The composition was said to be well-balanced, the colors exquisite, the still life better than any other from the period. Christ's face was 'filled pi \ ii 0PMENT8 IINCfc 1945 I II K I.YI. <)l I III CONN()|ggRUR With mmcf (Kiuittel 1938) and the maid perhaps the most beautiful one Vermeer ever painted' (Vtn Thienen 1939). Moreover, the style of the work was said to express all the great character traits of the painter himself (Hefting 1938).4 Most experts only started to voice doubts about the authenticity of the painting in the course of the two-year long lawsuit against the master forger Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), which started a few weeks after the end of World War II. Initially, Van Meegeren was charged with treason. He was thought to have taken advantage of the war situation in the Netherlands in 1943 to illegitimately sell a Vermeer, The Adulteress, to an agent of the German marshal Hermann Goring without permission to export such an important piece of the Dutch cultural heritage (Rijksdienst voor het Cultured Erfgoed, Amersfoort and Rijswijk). Van Meegeren denied the accusation, stating that he had not sold an authentic old master but a forgery by his own hand. Moreover, he declared that The Adulteress was not the only forgery he had created, and claimed authorship of six other paintings in the styles of Pieter de Hooch (1629-84) and Johannes Vermeer, including the well-known Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus in the Boymans Museum. The experts who had enthusiastically praised the Boymans painting earlier found Van Meegeren's far-reaching statement hard to believe. Bredius, who had 'rediscovered' the work, never changed his opinion about the attribution; he died in 1946 before the trial was concluded. •ig. 3 Han van Meegeren, Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus, c. i937> canvas, 118 x 130.5 cm. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam 24 ,111 EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE I'M5 Dirk Hannema, the director of the Boymans Museum who had purchased the painting, would continue to helicve in its authenticity until his death in 1984. Even art historians who had not been directly involved in the attribution or acquisition of the painting were initially reluctant to change their mind. For example, Frederica Bremer wrote in the introduction to the fifth edition of her survey of art history in 1945: 'In my personal opinion I would like to state that it is completely unacceptable that this work, which has no equal in Dutch painting in its pure expression of a deep religious emotion, could have been painted by a cowardly cheater [...] If this work is indeed old, Vermccr would be the only painter who could have created it. After serious consideration, we have therefore decided to keep the painting in its place for the time being.'s Such a position became increasingly difficult to maintain. To add credibility to his claim, Van Meegeren decided to create a new Vermecr forgery during the trial. Meanwhile, other kinds of evidence surfaced. In Van Meegeren's workshop in France, the police found paintings in the styles of Vermeer, Frans Hals and Gerard ter Borch as well as part of the seventeenth-century stretcher on which Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus had been painted. (Van Meegeren claimed that he had altered the width of the stretcher to fit his composition.) None of the paintings mentioned by Van Meegeren, moreover, could be traced further back in the past than the 1930s. When a number of painting experts - Prof. Dr. I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Dr. Hans Schneider, Dr. Wiebo Froentjes, Prof. Dr. Paul Coremans, Dr. Harold J. Plenderleith, F. Ian G. Rawlins, and Dr. A.M. de Wild - were consulted in court, they stated that the suspicious works did not date from the time of Vermeer and De Hoogh, and that these works could indeed have been painted by Van Meegeren.6 (Van Regteren Altena had acknowledged the painting as authentic in 1938, but had now apparently changed his mind.7) Scientific tests executed by Dr. Coremans confirmed a curious characteristic of the forger's working method. According to his own explanation, Van Meegeren always painted his forgeries on top of seventeenth-century canvases, using pigments that were consistent with those used by the old masters. In departure from seventeenth-century practice, however, he did not use oil paint. Instead, he employed a modern binding medium, Bakelite (phenol-formaldehyde), which allowed him to imitate the cracked surface of centuries-old oil paintings by briefly baking the finished works in an oven. Since this binding medium had only been invented in 1907, it was evident that the paintings concerned could not have been made in the seventeenth century.8 For the purposes of legal proof, it was not necessary to delve into the stylistic interpretations of Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus. But it was certainly curious that the Boymans painting had been analyzed in such radically different ways. Both before and immediately after the trial, experts described the style of Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus in quite generic terms strongly infused with value judgments. Interestingly, some of the same elements that were initially adduced to underline the high quality of the work were later seen as illustrative of its deficiencies. After the trial, the composition was seen as unbalanced and rather forced, the colors too gray, Christ's face decidedly effeminate (Kilbracken 1967), the maid cross-eyed and bald, and her lips too thick (Van Dantzig 1947)." 25 DEVELOPMENTS SINCE IQ45 THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR Fig. 4 Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter, c. 1669-70, canvas, 44 x 38.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Attempts were made to mitigate the extent of this radical shift in appreciation by commentators who claimed to have recognized the Boymans painting as a forgery long before the Van Meegeren trial started.10 However, this was not substantiated bv the published opinions about the painting. Only two scholars, Johan Huizinga and H.P. Bremmer, had mentioned deficiencies, but they had still praised the work, as a whole." Even the director of the Rijksmuseum, F. Schmidt-Degener, who was long thought to have recognized the piece as a forgery, had in fact attempted to acquire it for his museum. He had offered the Boymans Museum a deal: in exchange for Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus he was willing to give Boymans the Rijksmuseum's The Love Letter (c. 1669-70) by Vermeer (fig. 4) and a De Hooch.'2 In fact, the only ones who could prove that they had recognized the Boymans painting as a forgery before the trial were an art dealer from New York and a painter from The Hague. Representatives of the New York art dealer Duveen Brothers had looked at the painting when it was offered for sale in Paris and had sent a telegram to their head office, calling the work a 'rotten fake'. The Dutch painter Louis Meys had proposed to publish a brochure about the painting in order to expose it as a forgery. His move was recorded in the minutes of a meeting of The Hague Art Society {De Haagsche Kunstkring) on 26 September 1938." Unfortunately, neither the telegram nor the minutes specify which observations led to the conclusion that the Boymans painting was a fake. The mistaken attribution was somewhat understandable. Van Meegeren had created such MCZ"C,f MPrm °f tHat CVen the rCSt0rer who cleaned the Panting for the Bovmans Museum faded to notice that the work did not date from the seventeenth century.'* In art- 26 T1IK EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1945 Fig. 5 Johannes Vermecr, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, c. 1655, canvas, 158.5 x [41.5 cm. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh historical terms, the situation was not clear-cut. Brediuss conviction that the painting was a Vermeer was not based on a clear reconstruction of the artist's early work. The only comparable works by Vermeer, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (c. 1655, National Gallery ofScodand, Edinburgh) and Diana and Her Companions (c. 1655-56, Mauritshuis, The Hague), form a rather isolated group, with their generous formats and surprisingly large figures (figs. 5 and 6). Moreover, in these works Vermeer varied his style and painting technique considerably." Nevertheless, the Van Meegeren trial exposed a serious shortcoming in connoisseurship. The large number of experts who had failed to recognize that the painting was a forgery were seemingly unable to distinguish between an authentic old master and a fake. This painful conclusion not only affected the reputation of connoisseurs in the field of Dutch seven tee nth-century art more than any previous error had done, it also heightened awareness of the difficulties involved in attributing and dating paintings. In the aftermath of the affair, scholars became more cautious when authenticating and dating paintings. The need for a more precise, cautious approach was particularly evident in Vermeer research. The catalogue of Vermeers oeuvre compiled in i939 by A.B. de Vries originally included 43 works. After the trial the monograph was revised, and in the 1948 edition the group was reduced to 35 painting., most of which are still accepted as authentic Vermeers too^r I have been too severe in sorting out the paintings, this is due to the lesson that the Van Meegeren 27 IMF, F.YF. OF THE CONNOISSEUR Dl \ M Of ■MINTS UNCI 1945 Fig. 6 Johannes Vermeer, Diana and Her Companions, c. 1655-56, canvas, 97.8 x 104.6 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague case has taught us', De Vries wrote in his introduction.'7 However, only one of the paintings he dismissed has since been re-attributed: Lady at a Virginal was sold as an authentic Vermeer at Sotheby's in London on 8 July 2004 (fig. 7).18 From De Vries's selection of authentic works, no picture has been unanimously rejected by subsequent generations of Vermeer experts. One painting, The Girl with the Flute (National Gallery of Art, Washington), was given the label 'attributed to Vermeer' in the Gallerv, a standard formula to express doubt. Walter Liedtke nonetheless included it among the authentic paintings in his^ent oeuvre catalogue (fig. 8).'«' The authenticity of three other paintings has been questioned by Albert Blankert, but most other scholars, including Arthur Wheelock and Christopher right, accept them as authentic: Interior with a Woman Playing the Lute (The Metropolitan IZTJt^T Y°:k)' Inten°r ^ " ^interrupted at HerMusu (Frick Collection, New qu siLid the ^[^^ RedHat (Nati-al Gallery of Art, Washington; fig. 9). Blankert HXt.^ 11 T °f abrdded COndlti°n a"d s^sted that The GirlWith W^^Z^^TT" f0rgery-THe m°—y of the composition, the P support, the position of the foreground chair, and the fairly sharp transition Lin light to 28 THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1045 I Fig. 7 Johannes Vcrmccr, Young Lady at a Virginal, c. 1670, canvas, 25.2 x 20 cm. private collection Fig. 8 Attributed to Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Flute, c. 1665-70, panel, 20 x 17.8 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington darker areas were in his view uncharacteristic of Vermeer. He also pointed out that the provenance of the picture before 1822 is unclear.10 Arthur Wheelock, however, objected that poor condition should not be a reason to doubt the authenticity of these paintings. The pigments used ID The Girl with the Red Hat> he argued, indicate a seventeenth-century origin. Moreover, he pointed out that both the pigments and the painting technique, especially the colored highlights, are entirely consistent with accepted works by Vermeer.2' Although the exact scope of Vermeer's oeuvre remains the subject of some debate," the arguments advanced have become far more nuanced compared to the sweeping statements of the 1930s and '40s. The Van Meegeren scandal functioned as an important catalyst in this respect. In an extra paragraph that De Vries added to the revised edition of his Vermeer monograph, he Wrote that 'every attribution must be supported by evidence, insofar as one can provide proof in the thorny field of such conclusions'.23 Nowadays, this statement seems so self-evident that one would almost forget that connoisseurs of De Vries's generation were used to giving their opinions without much explanation. According to Vitale Bloch, connoisseurs' opinions were even inviolable' before the Van Meegeren trial.'4 In 1945 he stated that the worst consequence of the c°urt case would be that expert attributions would lose prestige. While this was indeed a great disadvantage to some scholars, for others it was a fairly positive development, especially for those ar* historians who had always believed that rationalizing one's opinion about a painting was a necessary step in the decision-making process. 2') DE VEl.OPM F. Fig. 9 Johannes Vermeer, The Girl with the Red Hat, c. 1665-66, panel, 22. National Gallery of Art, Washington Two Types of Connoisseurs Two witty cartoons by Saul Steinberg (1914-99) capture the essence of the attribution process in visual metaphors: the challenge is to recognize distinctively individual characteristics that - like fingerprints - allow one to identify the maker of a painting (figs. 10 and 11). One cartoon shows a painter in the process of creating a landscape painting with Van Gogh-like swirling patterns in the sky. His painting can also be seen as a giant fingerprint, an imprint of the artist's unique characteristics (in this case, presumably Steinberg's). The second cartoon depicts a landscape painting that features a number of such imprints, dispersed throughout the work. Indeed, the clues to the identity of a master sought by connoisseurs lie either in the entirety of a work or in certain telling passages. The question is how such characteristics could and should be recognized. or weU over a century, connoisseurs have developed two opposing views. Opinions are S;;;htht haVC m°St ^ in the attribution process: the connoisseur's origin or rar I ** the conn™seur experiences without folly grasping its the same ESS ^T^^ though both aspects can be considered part of theory and prac^Fronf ™Y ^nt nature has lons caused tension in both The one view imohes H Point of ™w, the difference in emphasis is crucial, in the purity of the on* is ulti™tely a matter of trust in the connoisseur and ty connoisseurs assessment, whereas the other view suggests that it is possible 30 mm I HI KYI OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE I945 to check the validity of attributions and to dcvelon a mnrr,t„ *l j n ť a v \a j , , 10Pa concrete method to attribute paintings. Before the Van Meegeren scanda t had hf>f»n feut. r ... 6 . , ¥ . • • „ . . * f ,. nad been ia,r'y common for well-known experts to sirnply refer to their intuition or feeling about a painting without further explanation. An interesting example can be found in a booklet that Cornells Hofstede de Groot wrote in 1925 to prove another connoisseur wrong: Echt ofonecht? Oog of chémie?- In a court case, Prof. Wilhelm Martin had attacked Cornells Hofstede de Groot's attribution of a painting to Frans Hals (c. 1583-1666) dismissing the work as a later pastiche (fig. 12). In response, Hofstede de Groot wrote: 'In an earlier polemic against Rembrandt researchers, Prof. Martin stated with great self-awareness that thanks to his feeling for style {stijlgevoet) he remarked certain things that his adversaries did not notice, since they did not have feeling for style or not as much as he did. I told him then in the clearest terms that what he considered feeling for style was no such thing, and I have to state here, too, that the fact that the learned gentleman does not recognize the hand of Frans Hals in every touch of the brush proves clearly that he does not have the least amount of feeling for Frans Hals's style either.'26 Thus, for Hofstede de Groot a mistaken attribution based on a certain feeling was not a reason to dismiss 'feelings' as a guide in these matters, or to stress the importance of clearer criteria in matters of attribution. Instead, he merely claimed that Prof. Martin's feeling for style was not as accurate as this expert liked to believe. (Interestingly, Van Meegeren expert Jonathan Lopez recently re-attributed the painting in question to this famous forger. After the Van Meegeren scandal an opinion like Prof. Martin's was no longer acceptable Fig-10 Cartoon from series by Saul Steinberg, The Passport, Hamish Hamilton, London 1954 Fig. 11 Cartoon from series by Saul Steinberg, The Passport, Hamish Hamilton, London 1954 Afb I. P. Hals. Ern vrooli|kr Fig. 12 Anonymous, Laughing Man, twentieth-century pastiche in the style of Frans Hals, current location unknown in public attribution debates. Although not all experts believed that attributions should entirely be based on rational arguments, in the first decades after the war attempts to objectify connois-seurship set the tone in the published sources. Moreover, even those experts who tavorcd ■ intuitive approach acknowledged the importance of rationalizing one's opinion. During the war, Max J. Friedländer (1867-1958), in his book On Art and Connowe*&t (London, 1942), had already argued that rational arguments could help to double-check «ti intuitive impression of a painting.28 Comparing a connoisseur's love ot I painting ib his love r a woman, he wrote: one should honor naivete, but not let oneself be ruled by it.'!" He street J the importance of more objective criteria than intuition - documentary evidence, signature and monograms (if genuine, and keeping in mind that I painting signed by a master could * have been painted by an assistant) - and of formal similarities between documental wor ^ the master and the painting to be attributed.'" 1 le also emphasized the importance ot tec nu^ examination for a better understanding of a painting's condition." Nevertheless, he belie* 0 ^ attributing a painting was ultimately a matter of intuition, a sudden insight that dettei definition, although it could be checked to a certain extent.'2 He believed that know e £ ^ connoisseurs would get the best insights it'they did not lose themselves in length) contemp ^ ^ of particular details and instead focused briefly on the painting in its entiretv U^NI ^ ^ work several times for six seconds was preferable, he explained, to studying it continuous }2 TIIF. EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE IO45 Friedländer had developed his view in reaction u th generation before him, the Italian expert Giovanni Mo*«* fIT C°nn°isseur of a Friedländer was regarded by late twentieths ,Z 1« ^ T ^ " WeU aS t sti k • fl • u- • 7 connoisseurs as a methodological predeces- sor, I will briefly summarize his major contribution to the debate. At the end of he Z< 1 cenmry Morelh published razor-sharp opmions on how old master paintings could and s u d be attributed. He was dismayed by the false judgments of experts who, in his view, mistakenly relied on their intuition and a general impression' of a work. The many poor attributions on the labels in public collections were a thorn in his eye. To repair the situation, he advocated a careful study of formal characteristics such as the painter's use of color, his preferences in landscape background and the types of ears and hands he favored." He noted that many artists have habits of execution that are best observed in subordinate parts of their work and provided his publications with charts of ears and hands that he regarded as characteristic for certain masters (fig. 13)." The analysis of such recognizable shapes he deemed objective' and 'scientific*, since the validity of such arguments could be checked.16 For well over a century Morelli's method has been a major source of inspiration for experts who favor a transparent, rational approach. On the other end of the spectrum, Friedländer has long counted as one of the most outspoken protagonists of an intuitive approach. In recent decades, both approaches have been further explored, as we will see. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, important new developments have occurred in both areas. On the one hand, computer programs have been designed to analyze and compare the characteristics of artworks in order to provide a firm basis for attributions; while on the other hand the first general overview has been published on expert intuitions or sudden insights and our understanding or them. Pictology and the Search for Objectivity Shortly after World War II, when the Van Meegeren trial had just ended, the Dutch artist and art critic Maurits van Dantzig published a book on the scandal titled Johannes Vermeer, de Em-mausgangers en de Critici (Leiden, 1947). The mistaken attribution had brought him to reflect on the methodology of connoisseurship. In his opinion experts tended to trust their intuitions too much. If they used arguments at all to support their attributions, these were far too tew. He therefore outlined in this book a method to attribute old master paintings, naming it 'pictology . After Van Dantzig's death, his method was explained more extensively by some of his students in Pictology: An Analytical Methodfor the Attribution and Evaluation of Pictures (Leiden 1973)-J Van Dantzig's main objective was to base attributions on rational arguments andto.avoid the connoisseur's intuition as much as possible* As a basis for solid attributions, he believed, it was crucial to distil at least ,00 characteristics of a painter's style from works -.cgd be attributed with relatively great certainty, such as documented works. »: paid a— both to stalls and more general characteristics. For Rembrandt, for example, he noted mor painted drawn' and ,Ls with the background ^^^^^^1 assess-A list of 100 or more characteristics served Van Dantzig as F 33 pi \ Ii OPMEN i 8 SINCE 104S i i M MR CONNois ■Mt Fig. 13 Drawings by Giovanni Morelli for his Kunstkritische Studien über italienische Malerei, 1890, vol. i (published under the pseudonym Ivan Lermolieff) List of Characteristics of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn 1. More painted than drawn. 2. The fall of the light is logically consequent. 3. The planes have "potato-effect"; they are lumpy. The high points are lighted, and the variations of light /shade go together with cool/warm and with variations of form. 4. Light and shade belonging to one object pass from almost white to almost black, for example, in the flesh. 5. The darkest and the lightest are thickly painted. 6. Half light: warm plus cool. 7. Half shadow: cool plus some warm. 8. Darkest is warm or cool, depending on the surroundings with which the darkest tones contrast. 9. In major parts: a) strongest light always on half light, b) darkest shadow always on half shadow. 10. In minor parts: glimpses of light occur on darkest shadow. There light butts against dark. 11. Large planes of white are to be found only in those places where linen and such are suggested. 12. Large planes of black are to be found only in those places where cloth and such are suggested. 13. Warm butts against cool, but also fine shades occur. Fig. 14 List of characteristics of Rembrandt paintings (fragment), after Maurits van Dantzig, Pictology: An Analytical Methodfor the Attribution and Evaluation of Pictures, Leiden 1973 34 i iii BYE OK THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1945 tag Other paintings potentially by the same master. The greater part of these characteristics, he posited, remained constant throughout a painter's working life, unaffected by increased experience, advancing age and deteriorating health. He therefore believed that his lists could be applied quite rigidly. Provided the list was entirely accurate, a new painting could be attributed to a given master if it matched more than 75 of the listed characteristics. If it matched less than 50%, it was certainly not by the master. He also included a margin for error. If the match was between 50% and 75%, more research was needed to reach a firm conclusion. Van Dantzig thus inserted a quantitative element into his attributions. A concise characterization of a painter's style or of certain telling details was in his view not sufficient. He insisted on a thorough analysis of a master's painting style, to be captured in words so that it could be checked. Some of his terms now seem dated, such as his emphasis on negative shapes {restvormen) and on 'cold' and 'warm' colors, concerns that reflect his own time more than the seventeenth century. But other criteria of his still seem remarkably astute, such as his observation that old masters tend to build up their compositions from the background to the foreground.''' Because Van Dantzig was so explicit in noting his observations, it is still possible to evaluate their validity, which is exactly what he intended. Apart from his general method of attributing paintings, Van Dantzig also developed a means to distinguish genuine old master paintings from copies and forgeries. In his view, every old master painting reflects a conflict between the artist's urge to create and the difficulties of rendering an object recognizable. He believed that great artists managed to reconcile these competing values with ease, so that their works display spontaneity, while copies and forgeries show a certain inhibition.40 A draftsman himself, he created examples of spontaneous lines and copied lines to illustrate how one could recognize spontaneity and inhibition (figs. i5a-b). Again, this was a rational assessment that could be checked. More recent experts who place rational arguments at the heart of the attribution process often refer to either Van Dantzig or Morelli.4' The most innovative contribution of this kind came from the Canadian art historian Hayden Maginnis, who related connoisseurship to insights from experimental psychology. Experiments by the Russian psychologist Alfred Yarbus and others have shown that people focus on those elements in a picture that they expect to find important. While doing so, their eye movements are strikingly repetitive (see fig. 16). This behavior changes, however, when subjects are asked questions while looking at a painting. Depending on the content of the question, their eye movements describe completely different patterns (fig. 17).4i This shows that preconceived ideas about the importance of certain passages have a strong impact on our eye movements, while new questions will literally alter the way in which we look.4' According to Maginnis, the most important merit of connoisseurs like Morelli was their insistence that careful examination of every aspect of a painting is relevant in decision-making. If a connoisseur falls back on a general impression, he is likely to conduct examinations in which the informational input will not change very much from viewing to viewing.44 Moreover, Maginnis 35 ...»,.....—.....• «•> 36 THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR UEVF.LOPMl S f N C F. "MS Fig. 16. After Yarbus, Eye Movements and Vision, Plenum Press, New York, 1967, fig. 108. These diagrams record the eye movements of a single subject freely examining a reproduction of Ilja Repin's painting An Unexpected Visitor (shown at the upper left). Each viewing lasted three minutes and the viewings are numbered to indicate the chronological sequence, which were separated by one or two days. 37 s 11NCB i<)4S THE RYE OF THE C()NN( Fig. 17. After Yarbus, Eye Movements and Vision, Plenum Press, New York, 1967, fig. 109. These diagrams record the eye movements of a single subject examining the same painting by Repin as in fig. 16, first freely (1), and subsequently with specific instructions: (2) estimate the material circumstances of the family, (3) surmise what the family was doing before the arrival at the visitor, (4) remember the clothes worn by the visitor, (5) remember the position of the figures and objects in the room, and (6) estimate how long the visitor had been away. 38 i hi i've of iii f connoisseur developments since 1945 e connoisseurship, rating ZX^^T^t L" '° ^ ^ ^ he argues that it is crucial to rationsTo el h ^ T t0 '°°k Imtead' h>Tofheses about a painters ^^^^^ ^ " ^ ™ ™e'S Recently, the search for a transparent, logical basis tor connoisseurship has also led to a radicallv new type of experiment. Around the world, teams of computer scientists have been developmg computer programs with the intention of facilitating the attribution process * At th end of 2004, a team from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire developed an innovative method to analyze pen lines and brushstrokes, based on a technique that had been developed to recognize the digital manipulation of photographs.^ With the aid of so-called 'wavelets', Siwei Lyu, Daniel Rockmore and Hany Farid were able to isolate pen- and brushstrokes and analyze their direction, scale and relation to surrounding strokes/8 They assumed that every painter or draftsman had a unique manner of applying ink and paint to the surface, which results in a kind of virtual signature that can be recognized by a computer without analyzing subject matter. Since subject matter is however likely to affect the variability of the strokes, they only compared works with similar subjects.49 The technique was successfully applied to high-resolution scans of thirteen landscape drawings in the style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Taking as a point of departure eight drawings that are considered to be authentic works by Bruegel, the scientists were able to distil model values for the penstrokes. Their findings confirmed the existence of a similarity between the authentic' drawings and noted deviant results for five drawings that are considered imitations'. Although the tool has not yet been tested on a larger group of works, the first results seem hopeful. Should it be possible to apply the technique more widely, then this would mean that certain habits of the hand, visible in pen- or brushstrokes, can provide a basis for attributions without taking the aesthetic quality of the art work into account. Although the computer analysis used to detect such habits is advanced, the underlying principle is not new. In fact, it is reminiscent of Morelli's method, which similarly focused on revealing habits of the masters hand without analyzing the artistic quality of pictures.50 Rembrandt Research and the Integration of Scientific Techniques The largest post-war research project that focuses entirely on identifying the oeuvre of one seventeenth-century painter is the Rembrandt Research Project. Founded in 1968, it set out to combine traditional connoisseurship and style analysis with the newest scientific techniques in order to purify Rembrandt's oeuvre/' In x935 Abraham Bredius had attributed 611 paintings to Rembrandt and many of these attributions seemed questionable at the end of :960s. The Rembrandt Research Project therefore decided to re-evaluate the paintings in order to distinguish the master's hand from the hands of pupils, assistants, followers and forgers.5 DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1945 THE IY1 OF THE CONNOISSEUR ~n l.ro-pr-sralc research project had started to assess the .SC ^^^^ L a ofln- °CU "1 t d cus Rubenss entire oeuvre of over >5oo works in a series of twenty-nine ;;:Z t£ !• *■ «0*. and research files of Ludwig Burchard. To date ^enUght tomes of this sees have been published/' Although the series aims to give a complete overview of Rubenss multi-faceted art, it is not so much an exploration of the boundaries [hat define his oeuvre as a thorough assessment of the oeuvre and its social and artistic contextL* Onlv works that are considered to be entirely or partly by Rubens have been catalogued. The attributions as such and the exact extent of Rubenss involvement are not discussed at length, nor have the paintings been subjected to a systematic analysis of their material structure." For the history of connoisseurship this means that Rubens research has not been a focal point for methodological discussions. Individual Rubens scholars did contribute to debates on the topic, as we shall see, but this took place mainly outside the published volumes of the Corpus Rubenianum. By contrast, the Rembrandt group placed attribution at the very core of their research activities. Partly for this reason, most methodological debates about connoisseurship over the last forty years have focused on the definition of Rembrandt's oeuvre. When the Rembrandt Research Project started, many connoisseurs were doubtful about the validity of existing attributions to Rembrandt and his contemporaries. For example, Horst Gerson, professor of art history at Groningen University and former director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague, noted in the introduction to his 1968 monograph on Rembrandt that he largely agreed with what British collectors tended to say about Dutch old masters, namely that 'nearly half of the old masters are wrongly attributed and the others are not old at aft'.* One year later, Gerson published a complete catalogue of Rembrandt paintings. He saw it more as a step in the right direction than as a definitive answer, and pointed out that no Rembrandt scholar had ever even seen all the possibly authentic Rembrandt paintings in real life.57 Compared to Gerson's study, the Rembrandt Research Project's endeavor was on an entirely different scale. At the instigation of Bob Haak, curator of old masters at the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the research was conducted not by a single expert but by a team of scholars. After a few early changes, the team came to consist of Josua Bruyn, professor of art history at the University of Amsterdam, Haak himself, Simon Levie, the director of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, Pieter van Thiel, curator of old master paintings at the Rijksmuseum, and Ernst van de Wetering, staff member of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science.'3 In pairs, the team members traveled the world to see in person all the paintings attributed to Kembrandt They wrote painstakingly detailed descriptions of the works, used up-to-date scientific methods of investigation wherever possible and subsequently decided about the status of the paintings as a team. The first three volumes of their catalogue, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, were published in 1982,1986 and 1989, covering the first seventeen years of Rembrandt's career rom 1 25 to ,642. The studies were particularly important for the way in which the authors in-orporated relatively new scientific research methods and for the high degree of precision in the justification of their decisions. 40 ,HI |M OF THK CONNOISSEUR DFVKI.OPM RNTS SINCE [945 In 1925 Cornells Hofstcde de Groot, in the course of a polemic concerning Frans Hals (Oog ofChemie? Echt of Onecht\ claimed that his judgment as a connoisseur was superior to scientific examination. By the time the first Corpus volume appeared, in 1982, such a line of argument was virtually unthinkable. The members of the Rembrandt Research Project, rather, were concerned that optimism about the possibilities of scientific examination might have taken on excessive form." Being the first to systematically research Rembrandt's entire painted oeuvre using a variety of scientific methods of investigation (combined with observations with the naked eye), they were in a unique position to evaluate the respective use of these techniques.60 Dendrochronology proved useful in dating the oak panels Rembrandt used for his early paintings. By determining the approximate year in which the tree used to make the panel was felled, the technique provides 'data post quern', that is, dates after which the paintings had to have been made. Tests executed by the Ordinariat fur Holzbiologie at the University of Hamburg provided surprising results when applied to paintings that the Rembrandt Research Project had originally considered later imitations.'" Most of these turned out to be done on authentic seventeenth-century panels, which in combination with other observations eventually led to the conclusion that the works did date from Rembrandt's time. X-ray photographs proved to be valuable in reconstructing Rembrandt's working process in terms of how he laid out his compositions and the order in which he executed various parts of a painting. X-ray images show especially lead-containing pigments very clearly, and since canvases were commonly primed with a lead-containing coating, X-ray photographs also allowed the group to study the structure and density of the original canvases on which the paintings were created.''2 This was important information that could not be acquired with the naked eye, since the canvas of most seventeenth-century paintings has since been covered by a second, more recent canvas. The Rembrandt Research Project's study of these canvases led to several striking conclusions, especially when the works had been cut down, or when the same flaw was found in the weaving of more than one painting, showing that they had been painted on canvas from the same bolt. Findings of that kind made it seem likely that the canvases had been bought in one batch and had all been used in Rembrandt's studio. Ultraviolet radiation and photographs and infrared reflectographs proved less informative. The former can be helpful in identifying later retouches, though its use depends largely on the condition of the varnish, making it a rather inconsistent source of information. Infrared reflectography, which is mostly used to study carbon-containing underdrawings, did not yield a large amount of information, as no underlying drawing in an absorbent material was discovered in Rembrandt paintings. For this reason, the Rembrandt Research Project decided against investing in this technique.63 Neutron activation autoradiography yielded insights about the master's working method, but were too costly to be used on a large scale. Most significant in this respect was the investigation by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the early 1980s, the results or which were also studied by the Rembrandt Projects By making several paintings radioactive and subsequently recording the radiation of the various pigments in a number of photographic plates, a 41 in vn op mi n is UNCI i<)45 THK RYR °F THR CONn°'SSRur clear putuir emerged of thl We« i« which the different pigments had been used. This gave the scholar* informettOll on paint layers below the surface that could barely, if at all, be detected with other techniques. I istly, samples of the paint and ground layers gave mixed results. Rembrandt's pigments were found not to differ much from those of his pupils and contemporaries, or even from those used by his followers. Analyses of paint samples were therefore of hardly any use when trying to identify the master's hand. Only in the rare instances when a pigment was found to have gone in or out of use at a certain moment did a paint sample give an indication as to when a painting was made. For example, the presence of lead-tin yellow made it likely that a painting was made before 1750, as the pigment fell out of use at that point. Gradually it became evident that technical examination seldom provided absolute certainty concerning attributions. Only when a painting was a later imitation could technical evidence provide a conclusive answer. The team had expected to find many such later imitations, but instead found relatively few.65 When it came to sorting out the attributions of seventeenth-century paintings, these techniques turned out to be much less helpful. Nonetheless, the Rembrandt Research Project's decade-long analyses of Rembrandt's technique greatly enhanced their understanding of Rembrandt's working methods. Their findings served as a major incentive for further technical research into his working methods as well as those of other seventeenth-century masters. Technical examination of works by some of Rembrandt's contemporaries showed that the usefulness of the various techniques varies somewhat from one master to the next. For example, Vermeer's use of pigments appears to have been more unique and thus more significant in attributions.66 According to Libby Sheldon and Nicola Costaras, he may have been the only Dutch master who used the very expensive blue pigment lapis lazuli for background colors, such as the bluish-white color of a background wall.6r Interesting results were also achieved when infrared reflectography was applied to paintings by one of Rembrandt's most talented pupils, Carel Fab-ritius (1622-54). In the context of the 2004 Fabritius exhibition, Jorgen Wadum discovered that several contested Fabritius paintings in fact carried the master's signature. The signatures were no longer visible to the naked eye, but showed up clearly in infrared reflectographs (fig. 18).68 Fig. 18 Infrared reflectugraph showing Fabritius's signature, after Duparc 2006 42 mi » > I 01 im connoisseur dkvki.opmrnts sincf K While the usefulness of the varimti f„,.u„' • , Ii f , • US techn,q»cs contmues to be explored, it is with dimin- ished hopes of reaching near or complete certainty. The experience ofriJn k A 11 /• i • ,. , *• 1 "L experience ot the Kcmbrandt proiect was particularly meaningful in this regard in that it *h™,~A -u * • . F'"JCLl was 1 . , „ . ^ tnat ,f snowcd that attributions to the master always remained a matter ot interpretation. Despite the team members' innovative use of scientific techniques and their effort to be as open and objective as they could, they could not avoid a certain subjectivity. Their very openness about their considerations made it evident that their conclusions were based on a number of assumptions, two of which became the subject of much debate. Firstly, the team members expected a great coherence in Rembrandt's early development, both in his style and in his technique.6" They expected Rembrandt's development to be logical and linear, and it was for this reason that they occasionally even questioned the dates that Rembrandt had put on his own work, in particular the dates he inscribed on his Bust of a Young Man (A23, Cleveland Museum of Art) and his Samson and Delilah (A24, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; fig. 19)."° In a larger sense, the question arose as to whether Rembrandt was more experimental than the team allowed him to be. For example, several critics were surprised that the team questioned two out of three paintings in a series done on the highly unusual support of copper topped with gold leaf (figs. 20-22). The works varied too much in style for the Rembrandt Research Project 43 DEVELOPMENTS UNCI 1045 THE EYE OF* TMI CON No | SS Hi p Fig. 20 Rembrandt van Rijn, Laughing Man in Gorget, c. 1629-30, guilded copper, 15.3 x 12.2 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague Fig. 21 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1630, guilded copper, 15.5 x 12.2 cm. The National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm 44 THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE I rig. 11 Rembrandt van Riin. OM H'oman /v,™,* »19 10. guiMrd copper. 15.5 x 12.1 em. Ref the woman's in her right hand and both his hands, the fine hrnsl 7 i. " " W°''k charac,eri^tion of form which lack plasticity, the red and orange snlotchcsT , I ,We °f ,he ««. his face (which, according to the Rembran,!, tJZSpZ 7 T "? ^ °f coquettish'coloristic effects), the purplish pink ^Z^^J^J'"^^''^ underpainting, with a terrace-like st ucture ,nd inT , """^ T. and m°Uth'the b=;:^^ The verdict caused considerable debate. Christopher Brown John Brealey, M. rurby Taller and Walter Liedtke in particular sharply disagreed with the Rembrandt Research Project's analyses of the portraits' style and quality." In their view, the portraits should be seen as so-called 'Monday morning paintings'. Admittedly, these were not the masters best works, but they deemed the paintings nonetheless authentic. Moreover, Kirby Talley claimed that even it Rembrandt had used assistants for some parts of these works, this was no reason to de-attribute them, for such a practice would have been perfectly common in the seventeenth century/6 Indeed, the possibility that Rembrandt had used an assistant for the execution of these paintings raised various questions. Did the inscription of Rembrandt's name not indicate that such works counted as 'Rembrandts' in the seventeenth century? And if so, was it not awkward that they would now be put in the same category as copies and later imitations?" While most of the Rembrandt Research Project's findings and attributions met with agreement, a number of contested pictures illustrated the extreme consequences of some of the project's assumptions and called for further reflection. Eventually some of these issues led to changes in approach within the Rembrandt Research Project. While compiling the first three volumes, the team members had sometimes been divided. Ernst van de Wetering, in particular, had occasionally added a 'minority opinion' to the team's analysis of particular paintings." When the older members of the team retired in 1990, Van de Wetering, who had become professor of early modern art at the University of Amsterdam, took over leadership and decided to alter the team's organization and - to some extent - its objectives.-' He gathered a group of younger assistants around him, agreed on a regular collaboration with several outside specialists, and started to supervise the production of two more Corpus volumes, assuming the rolcot auctor ^teUectua^ the project's main writer and editor Under his supervision, Volume IV, dJ^^^ brandt's self-portraits, appeared in aoo5. Volume V, dedicated to the small-scale history paintings after 1642, was published at the end of 2010. both ^ j { In statements published in i993 about the change within tn t " 1 • j *u„t the new team would aoanuon tux cun members and Ernst van de Wetering emphasized that the ne ialists> museum tested A-B-C categorization and collaborate more intensively with outside sp 47 PI VI I OPMENTS SINCE 1945 THE FYE OF THF- CONNOISSF,!p professionals in particular.8' The new team's first published analysis (1996) subsequently placed much emphasis on technical findings and the amount of certainty these provided. In this article, 'New directions in the Rembrandt Research Project, part I: the 1642 self-portrait in the Royal Collection, the new team re-attributed this self-portrait largely on the basis of technical findings.8'The presence of lead-tin yellow had undermined the RRP's initial belief that the painting was a late eighteenth-century copy, while various paint samples made the scholars aware of the extent to which the painting had been overpainted. Moreover, the discovery of the outlines of an earlier composition (presumably a self-portrait) underneath the current self-portrait seemed consistent with the master's studio practice and strengthened the new team's conviction that the painting was, in fact, an authentic Rembrandt. On a methodological level, however, the abandonment of the A-B-C categories and the new technical investigations did not constitute the new team's greatest innovations. While the paintings were indeed no longer classified into the A, B or C categories, an insert in Corpus IV shows all the paintings discussed in the volume and highlights the authentic ones with a star (*), which hardly differs from the previous A-category.8? And while the new team's technical investigations led to some revealing finds - such as the realization that Rembrandt had decided to prime canvases in his studio from 1642 onwards and that these studio-made grounds were recognizable because of the sand (quartz) he used in them84 - they did not spark a fundamentally new approach. In fact, the openness to new methods of investigation and the thoroughness with which these were assessed were strongly reminiscent of the project's original intention of using new technologies to refine more 'traditional' connoisseurship and assess Rembrandt s oeuvre 'with all available methods'.85 More significant were Ernst van de Wetering's growing conviction that Rembrandt had been an experimental painter and his strong interest in reconstructing the historical context in which Rembrandt's paintings were made. While the old team had made great efforts to recognize a logical and linear development in Rembrandt's evolution in style and technique, van de Wetering became increasingly convinced that Rembrandt had 'no fixed habits'.80 Instead, he aimed to define the artistic problems that in his view had inspired the painter's progression from work to work in a process of trial and error. This made it possible to accept a greater variety in style, including, for example, the three contested works on copper topped with gold leaf (see above), which Van de Wetering interpreted as an attempt by Rembrandt to create a painterh equivalent of three well-known literary styles (see chapter 4, 'Style and Subject'). Moreover, the old and new team differed in the way in which they analyzed Rembrandt s use of color, light and surface structure. While the old team's analyses of Rembrandt's style were strongly indebted to modernist concepts (such as the 'cool' and 'warm' colors we also encountere in Van Dantzig descriptions), Ernst van de Wetering helped to reconstruct the meaning of 8» eral seventeenth-century art critical terms, including 'houding (that is, the balancing of colors an tones in order to create a suggestion of depth - see also chapter 6).*' He thus related Rembrandt development in style and technique to the broader context of art theory and paved the way tor a better understanding of Rembrandt's artistic goals in historical terms. 48 THF EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR DEVELOPMENTS SINCE i 945 fit Fig. a5 Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Anna Six-Wymer, 1641, panel, 96 x 80 cm. Six Collection, Amsterdam Nevertheless, he also reflected the objectives of the old RRP in more than one way. Like the older team, he aimed mainly to distinguish Rembrandt's autograph work from works by pupils, assistants and later imitators. Although he became convinced that Rembrandt had collaborated with assistants on some of his early portraits, he believed that such instances were highly exceptional in Rembrandt's studio.88 Moreover, even in the case of collaborations, he believed it was of great importance to separate the master's input from other hands, as he explained in a 2006 pamphlet dedicated to one such collaborative work, Rembrandt's Portrait of Anna Six-Wymer (fig. 25): Th. b e question is how such a product of collaboration should be described. A 'Rem-ran * ®T a Rembrandt with assistance'? Because Rembrandt was the head of the workshop it would be usual to call such a painting simply a 'Rembrandt'. However, e is one drawback to this: the huge difference in quality' between master and pupil could lead to the obscuring of our image of Rembrandt - an image which is now in the Process - albeit a gradual one - of gaining greater definition and clarity. It therefore really will be essential to further refine the attribution to one or more hands. prey3 metnodol°gical level, the new Rembrandt Research Project was also reminiscent of the team in its definition of the decision-making process on which the attributions are 49 [II V il'MI'N l'S SIM I I'll IHK F.YK Ol based Vlthough tin- lengthy and extremely precise analyses in the entries in vols. | |[[ give the impression that the tram was striving for Morellian objectivity, they did nor hHicv^rh^ tin mi rational arguments formed the essence of their judgments. Tellingly, the team members 1, J already indicated in the very first Corpus volume that 'It is ,1 mistake to think that even the meticulous process of argument for or against the authenticity of a painting covers the whole ( f the visual experience that led to that opinion.'1" Contrary to what one might expect, the team members' method was therefore not unlike that of Friedender. lake him, they too believed that connoisseurship was ultimately a matter of intuition.And although Van de Wetering later em phasized how much technical research has changed connoisseurship since Friedländer's time he too maintained that rational arguments never really captured all the intuitive criteria that come into plav when making up one's mind.'" Thinking without Thinking Despite the various attempts to rationalize connoisseurship after the Van Meegeren scandal, several writers maintained that the attribution process ultimately defied explanation. For example, Ernst Gombrich noted in 1952 that recognizing an artist's individuality was ultimately an intuitive process, like recognizing a voice over the telephone. It was not something that could be captured in clear rules.qz In his view, the key question was how much consistency one could expect in an artist's style. Knowledge about historical context could help answer the question, but it could not give absolute certainty. Therefore, he believed that the attribution decision was ultimately based on an intuitive assumption about the variability of a painter's style. If a connoisseur's judgment were indeed merely an intuitive decision that defied rational explanation, this would mean that the validity of attributions could not be evaluated. From a methodological point of view, this was a rather disconcerting idea. Indeed, several scholars questioned the validity of connoisseurship in general for precisely this reason. In particular Garv Schwartz and Hessel Miedema wondered if connoisseurship was or could be reliable and academic' in its methodology.93 And Otto Pacht stressed that if art history was ever to be a scholarly discipline at all, it had to base its statements on specified criteria. Even in what he called 'restricted areas of enquiry' such as attribution matters, a sudden, intuitive insight should never be enough, in his view.94 These critics were correct in positing that an intuitive decision without any explanation is not academic and cannot be checked. But would that make intuitive judgments invalid? RW* believed that objects were often correctly attributed without being backed up by valid criteria, one could have a true insight without being in any position to corroborate it."s This raises the question of how exactly these intuitive insights could be explained, and if a better understanding of how they operate could help to judge their validity. The last decades have yielded new understanding about the sudden insights ot experts, especially in the fields of neuroscience and psychology."6 Many of these findings were engag ingly discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in his popular book Blink: The Power of Thinking without 50 ihi l \ i Ol iii! l ON NO i SS III |< DEVELOPMENTS Sfl '945 niver-can Thinking of 2005. By means of an introduction to the tonic GlarWIl 4 u u t^jvuj it^, i«pic, Vjiaawell related how the art exnert tedenco Zen had recognized the Getty kouros sculpture as a fake in a flash, long before he could rationahzc lus u.press.on.^H.s book illustrates how astute such sudden insights can be, bu a warns the reader about the impact of mistaken assumptions While one might classify such a sudden insight as a 'feeling', recent research has demonstrated that it is more like a subconscious decision. To explain flash insights Gladwell uses the example of a person crossing a street who suddenly jumps onto the sidewalk when he sees a car coming towards him at great speed. The decision to jump onto the sidewalk ,s not made consciously. In such a s,tuation, we realize in a flash what to do and we do so without consciously thinking about it. In daily life our brain delegates a multitude of tasks to a subconscious part of our cortex. It enables us to make decisions much more quickly than we would if we were to make up our minds consciously. A famous experiment conducted by Antonio Damasio and his colleagues at the U sity of Iowa shows how much more quickly we realize something subconsciously than we grasp it rationally."8 They invented a game in which they asked subjects to pick cards from four piles, allowing them to choose between red cards and blue cards. Depending on the cards they picked, the subjects could either win or lose points. The game was set up in such a way that the red cards gave great losses and occasionally a great gain; it was impossible to win the game by only picking cards from the red piles. In contrast, the blue cards gave more modest gains and occasionally small losses. The only way to win the game was by picking cards from the blue piles. The scientists' question was how long it would take the subjects to realize this and to explain it. On average the subjects realized after about 50 cards that the blue piles were more advantageous than the red ones. After about 80 cards, they could explain why this was the case. This is how we learn to make decisions: we have an experience, think about it and develop a theory to explain it. However, the scientists measured not only the conscious responses of the subjects, but also well-known stress signals such as sweating palms and slightly elevated heart rates. Tellingly, their subjects already started responding stresstully to the red piles after about 10 cards, and this influenced their behavior; before they realized themselves, they more often chose cards from the blue piles. This experiment demonstrates that learning on a subconscious level can take place very quickly. We register signals and adjust our behavior long before we can rationally explain what is going on and why we react in a certain way. Various other research projects indicate that flash insights are not only quicker than conscious deliberations, but that they can also be more refined. It is not always possible to rationalize our convictions. An example cited by Gladwell is the case of the tennis coach Vic Braden. Braden is extremely good at predicting when a player will hit a double fault (two consecutive faulty serves), but he cannot figure out what his subconscious knowledge is based upon. He is still in the process of trying to reconstruct his flash insights. There is no guarantee that this is possible, although various other attempts at analyzing flash insights have set a hopeful example." 5i pi \ i i opments since 1045 the eye Or the connoi However, Gladwell also warns that flash insights are not always valid. They can h* bipod on mistaken assumptions. He himself noticed the influence of such assumptions when he changed his hair style.'00 Suddenly, he was stopped much more regularly by security guards and policemen. After having a short, conservative cut for years, he decided to grow his hair longer and have a large head of afro-style curly hair. Security guards and policemen make many rapid subconscious decisions when executing their job and an afro-style hairdo apparently influences their response. This does not mean that their response is better. In attribution matters, such assumptions are related to what the connoisseur perceives as characteristic of a particular painter's work. If the connoisseur's image of an artist is based on an incorrect assumption, this can obstruct the attribution process. Aelbert Cuyp's history painting The Baptism of the Eunuch seems an appropriate example in this context (fig. 26). For years it was not recognized as a Cuyp even though the master signed it. The reason for this was presumably that experts associated Cuyp not with biblical scenes but with the idyllic landscapes and city views that earned him most of his fame. In attributing a painting, the connoisseur is confronted with a variety of complex questions. To what extent did the painter vary his style and choice of subjects? Did he work by himself the eye of the connoisseur developments since 194c or in collaboration with others such as studio assistants? Was the painter consistent in the bu.ld-up o. h, works? Although such questions cannot often be answered with certainty, the conno.s-seur nonetheless has to form an lmaee - rnncrm„ei„ u • . , . . , • fa • itt Consciously°r consciously-of what he deems to be characteristic of the painter. The validity nfan <.<+*». j j , . validity of an attribution depends on the correctness of the connoisseur s assumptions.10' An Ongoing Debate Although the shock of the Van Meegeren scandal has long fostered fears that another forgery might challenge the authority of established connoisseurs of Dutch (or Flemish) old masters, no widely celebrated painting has turned out to be a fake since then. Quite the opposite, many paintings that were thought to be eighteenth- or nineteenth-century fakes turned out to date from the seventeenth century. As a result, the attention of connoisseurs in this field has focused increasingly on sorting out the various categories of seventeenth-century paintings, distinguishing originals from copies and the masters work from that of his pupils, assistants and followers. New scientific techniques that were initially expected to expose forgeries have instead enhanced our understanding of the painting techniques of the old masters. Meanwhile, the connoisseur's key question of how much consistency one can expect in the oeuvres of old masters continues to cause debate. One of the most lively discussions concentrated on the Portrait of Rembrandt with Gorget in the Mauritshuis (fig. 27). Though long regarded as an authentic self-portrait by Rembrandt, the portrait was dismissed as a copy when closely compared to Self-Portrait with Gorget in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg by Claus Grimm in 1991 on the basis of detailed slides (fig. 28). The organizers of the 1999 Rembrandt self-portrait exhibition researched the paintings further and reached the same conclusion. The discovery of an underdrawing in the Mauritshuis picture - a tracing of the Nürnberg painting - confirmed its derivative status in their view.102 Yet the possibility remained that the picture could be a second version by the master, executed in a demonstratively different manner. At the exhibition conference, Jorgen Wadum argued on the basis of mostly technical evidence that the picture was by another hand. Among other things, he noted that Rembrandt never used an underdrawing, and that the mechanical character of this underdrawing was nothing like known drawings by the master. Moreover, he pointed out that the painting's undermodeling was less patchy than what he expected of Rembrandt and that the painting was not built up as economically as was Rembrandt's practice. The existence of various other copies after Rembrandt self-portraits strengthened his conviction that this version, like those other works, was done by a pupil in Rembrandt's workshop. Eric Jan Sluijter, on the other hand, defended the attribution of the portrait to Rembrandt. In his view, the unusual execution was deliberate. He believed that the master had created another version of his self-portrait to demonstrate his ability to paint in an elegant, 'neat' manner, possibly at the request of a client.- He pointed out that the underdrawing was related to the stu- 53 df.vei oi'mknts since iq45 HIE EYE Of THE CONNOI<,,p„R Fig. 27 Rembrandt van Rijn (?), Portrait of Rembrandt with Gorget, c. 1629, canvas, 37.9 x 28.9 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague Fig. 28 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Gorget, 1629, panel, 38 x 31 cm. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 54 i iii im 01 i 11 i i onnoisskur DEVELOPMENTS % So practice of repeating ■ composition with the rid of., , to tree hand drawings by the master. Moreover, the fact hah* ******* not comparable not I reason to dismiss it, in his view. He related the 'ft '' " pa,ntinB was a coPY was in itself ons fashions in art and personal appearance The ele^nt ^Z^J^^ * I""***0**** aristocratic look and hairdo that Rembrandt to k k Pamt,nS suited the more Nürnberg. Sluijter believed that this painting far fT 'k in conrrasr to the one in the master's exceptional ingenuity. To which h, h£Zu * ^ hy 3 pUpi1' was evidence »f «N. Penoa seemed caple Ä^^^ »- **" Both speakers published their views in rhr *rt KU. • i . of curators of Dutch art, but no consensus was reached, illustrating the cornpiel^ he ^ How hkcly was ,t that Rembrandt would copy his own self-portrai, and that he would have done so, moreover, in a distinctively different style?105 As in the case of the Portratt of Rembrandt wtth Gorget, the distinction between the master and a good pupil or assistant is often problematic. Among Rubens scholars in particular distinguishing between various types of studio product constitutes a notoriously difficult challenge. This led Arnout Balis to question the various categories into which paintings from the master's workshop have been classified and tentatively to design a new typology. In his view the distinction between purely autograph works by the master on the one hand and other workshop products on the other hand results in a 'much too coarse and virtually useless image of [Rubens's] production'.'06 In his view, the master's production was very diverse. Nevertheless, certain picture types seem to have prevailed, such as autograph works by the master himself; large-scale paintings designed by the master and executed in collaboration with his workshop (and made to look like work by his hand); and paintings made in collaboration with other masters, such as Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Frans Snyders (1579-1657). The second category in particular comprises a large number of paintings, according to Balis. Much work remains to be done, he states, if we wish to understand the way in which Rubens organized his workshop. One of the difficulties faced by the Rubens specialist is that systematic technical assessment of his oeuvre has only just begun. As things now stand, we are faced with widely varying, even contradictory, interpretations of Rubens's production. In the early twentieth century, Rudolf Oldenbourg argued that from 1611 on Rubens ran an efficiently organized studio, geared to fulfilling the great and ever increasing number of commissions that came his way. This new strategy involved an adjustment of the style in which he been working until then. To rationalize his production, according to Oldenbourg, he developed a style k1 which contours play a leading role, forms are defined through the systematic use of light and shadow, and local colors are applied in clearly defined planes. This interpretation still counts thorough and integral assessments of Rubens's oeuvre (fig- Over , . t \r d«m*M» ind Mane-Louise Hairs, among otners. counter-movement championed by Leo Van P^velde'TT^. md mMnt,imd instead They downplay the share of assistants and puplBffl™«»" r attributions to that the master produced most of his paintings single-handedly. 55 i) i \ ii oi'mfnts sincf. 1945 imf iyi of 'HP. CONN0|S,R| Fig. 29 Peter Paul Rubens, Christ John and Two Angels, c. 1615-20, canvas, 95.2 x 121.9 cm. Wilton House, Salisbury Rubens, the question is thus not only how much consistency we can expect from the master himself, but also, and perhaps more importantly, how he produced paintings within his workshop. A discussion of a third kind was sparked by the Man in a Helmet (fig. 30a) traditionally assigned, on the basis of its confident, rough brushwork, to Carel Fabritius, one of Rembrandt's best pupils. In 1981 it was de-attributed because that very boldness of execution did not seem to have a parallel in Fabritius's oeuvre.'°" When in 2004 and 2005 an exhibition was held in the Mau-ntshuis, The Hague, and the Staatlichen Museum, Schwerin, the two views clashed. The Mau-ntshuis curator Ariane van Suchtelen argued that the painting should indeed be de-attributed, while Fabritius specialist Christopher Brown, who included the painting in his monograph on the painter in 1981, once again argued in favor of Fabritius s authorship of the work. Among other things, Van Suchtelen found the unusual execution of the face suspect: 'In Fabritius's Portrait of Abraham Potter- someone of roughly the same age as the man in the helmet - the thin, transparent skin under the eyes is suggested through a dark underpaying that is visible through the top layers, while in the Man in a Helmet the same area is rendered with tairlv opaque, overlapping .rushstrokes of different colors.'- Brown, on the other hand, maintained that the Man in a He! 56 THE i've of THE CONNOISSEUR 68.5 x 57 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam met was a powerful' and original' painting by Fabritius himself, the unusual brushwork of which is a mark of the master's ingenuity.'11 As with the other controversies, scholarly opinion about this painting remains divided to this day. Part of the problem, especially in the case of Fabritius, is the lack of a clear frame of reference. Fabritius's undisputed oeuvre consists of a mere twelve paintings.'" Moreover, the painting's unusual execution raises more methodological questions. Does the bolder, thicker and somewhat more colorful manner of painting of the Man in a Helmet indeed warrant a de-attribution, or could it be a deliberate stylistic variation by the master? More generally, can we expect a painter such as Carel Fabritius to use exactly the same manner of painting in a commissioned portrait as in paintings of a different type, such as the Man in a Helmet} All three controversies in their own way beg an essential question, how did century painters and art lovers think about issues of style, quality, authorship j r rta ^1___j TTipmich seventeenth-centurv paintings practice? In my judgment, connoisseursh.p of Dutch -ve P cannot be discussed fruitfully without loolang at the decLn-maWng ■n .ts general patterns and the habits of individual artist. As we mm^ ^ process of the connoisseur does not exist m a vacuum. It s . ^ exclusivelv, on the ex- the artist and his time. Often, those assumptions rely wrJ * wider frame o(nknnce is amination of existing works. To my mind, this does no ^ ^ fe ^ ^ indispensable, that is: a reconstruction of the terms by w I « was made. That is the subject of the concluding section of this chap 57 ni \ i i OPM EN is 91NC1 104s '»F.F,YP.orn,F.r()NNoi^[)R A Glimpse of Seventeenth-Century Connoisseurship In the seventeenth century as now, experts in Dutch and Flemish art were not all Dutch or Flemish themselves. In fact, one of the most erudite art lovers who (among other things) had taste tor Dutch and Flemish pictures was the Parisian writer and collector Roger de Pi|es. f |js Conversations sur la connaissance de la peinture (1677) contains one of the seventeenth century's most revealing discussions of the attribution of pictures. The work is written as a dialogue between three connoisseurs. One of them, Damon, is said to have made a good impression on fellow connoisseurs by discerning an original from a copy and identifying the makers of both pictures. The other, Pamphile, docs not seem to attribute pictures often. When Damon asks him whv he never replies when being asked his feeling {sentiment) about a picture, he answers: Because it is not easy to decide in this way on all sorts of paintings, and because I prefer to remain silent to giving random opinions. What, answers Damon, do you want a painting to remain without a name, so that connoisseurs cannot find it? Why not? replies Pamphile; in all schools of painting there have been many skilled people who made beautiful things, whose names have not come down to us, either because they did not live very long, or because they stayed almost their entire life with masters whose great reputation did not allow their pupils to acquire one for themselves. And if one were to know all the styles and the names of all the painters, there are [still] such doubtful paintings that it would be foolhardy to attempt to ascertain the name of their author. The majority of skilled painters have changed from one style to another and in between they have made works that belong neither to the first style nor the second. That means, in all honesty, I interrupt, that in fact you do not attach much importance to the knowledge of names. On the contrary, replies Pamphile, I highly esteem this knowledge; and if one has a beautiful painting (even if one doesn't appreciate its beauty to the full) it is always very pleasant to know who made it. But to be honest with you, true knowledge of painting consists in knowing if a painting is good or bad; in making the distinction between what is good in a certain painting and what is bad; and to rationalize the judgment one has made of it.*3 They continue to discuss issues of attribution. According to Pamphile there are two ways of recognizing who made a picture. One can look at the character of the hand' or 'the character of the mind .The former is 'the habit that every painter has in handling his brush', the latter the'genius of the painter, which can be seen in 'his inventions' and in 'the particular air' he gives his figures and the other objects he represents."4 The first way of attributing a picture is the one Damon used when he attributed the 'original' and the 'copy' in the presence of fellow connoisseurs, as he himself admits. He describes it 58 i ill I \ I OF THE CONNOlSlfcU] TH« painter VFRSIIS VM k3us the connoisseur? || looking at 'very noticeable marks' like 'the touch "airs" [sic | of heads that some painters use frequent! ° ^ °V WCak co,ors'ccrtain .unmging the hair, of attributes and of entire hV„r TT* rePeti"°ns of drapery, of styles of strikes [..] the eye'.- It is a useful but rather sunTrfi ! T ? >ne-s^-quoi" that Interestingly, the connoisseurs in this ijn Z2 T\ to Pamph"e.- able to acquire a reputation of their own as thcV aWv7 ' °f Painters who were un- gests that painters working for a well-known master rlmred T. maSters"7This sug" style rather than in a distinctive style of their own f u uT ^ Very d°Se f° their master's a different perspective ^ph^^^^t " ^ " in handling the brush. While a paintingbT^ ^ ^ i j • . ... ° uu"c 111 rne style of a we -known master nne could ,„ sonae tnstances ,nU recognize something distinctively individual ,n the handl f brush wh.ch explain, how Damon could even attribute a copy to a specific painter. Unfortunate ly he does not spectfy what cmena he used when doing so and if he considered some elements more telling than others. Identifying the specific elements that constitute the 'character' of a certain painter becomes even harder when one realizes that a well-known master did not always have one style only. Pamphile and Damon might give the impression in this passage that they regard style as a linear phenomenon, in which each master has both a style of his own and the ability to change from one style to another. Regarded more closely, however, their concept of style is revealed to be more subtle than that. When discussing the particularities of Rubens's life and style, they both agree with a third connoisseur, Philarque, who praises the diversity of Rubens's manners. According to Damon, 'it seems that after having made one [painting] in one taste, he seems to have changed his mind [literally: 'genie] and taken on another spirit, to make another [painting] in another taste'."8 Philarque remarks that Rubens had 'barely at all a particular way of handling the brush or a habit of employing always the same tones or colors'. Rather than a particular habit, it is 'the great effect' and 'firm and happy execution' that characterizes his work."9 Although the sheer difficulty of identifying the maker of some seventeenth-century paintings makes them all the more intriguing, it is not the only interesting aspect of these pictures. In the introduction to his dialogues, Roger de Piles warns novice connoisseurs against over-focusing on one particular aspect of a picture. It is a common mistake, he writes, to look only at that aspect about which one knows something, for example, only at the story that has been depicted, the depiction of the passions ('/'expression des passions de Vame\ the geometrical perspective or the use of color. Later, it is as if De Piles's own opinion resounds when Pamphi e states that«:m no so much the identity of the maker of a picture that is important as the quality of the work, that is, successful and less successful elements in the painting. ^ Seventeenth-century comments such as these on th P«a^ J ^ Pictures are exceedingly rare. This makes it difficult to of the age. The authenticity and style expressed by De Piles's connoisseurs^^ ^ the8matter. absence of explicit texts does not however prevent us^rrom treatises and of course Inventories, auction catalogues, legal documents, guild reg a i 59 I HI IVAINTKR VERSUS THE CONNOISSEUR? | THE EYE OF THE CONNOl. the pictures themselves provide an unexpected wealth of information about views on itv and style prevalent in the Golden Age. What they reveal is that ideas like those for bv Roger dc Piles were fairly widespread at the time, in the Netherlands as wr II ^ -i 1 as e'sewherp ;„ huropc. ,n 60 Lomtn, vm. Opp* 2. copie naar a. carracci. landschap met baders. Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins. 3. COPIE NAAR A. CARRACCI LANDSCHAP MET BADERS. Haarlem, Tevler's COl.LiCTIE. 31a, b 6c c Annibale Carracci, Landscape with Bathing Figures (drawing) and two copies, Van Gelder 1958, figs. 1-3 CHAPTER 2 Original or Copy A Crucial Distinction In 1663 Constantijn Huygens the Younger (1628-97), the art lover, amateur draftsman and future secretary to Stadholder-King William III (1650-1702), wrote a letter to his older brother in Paris.' Shortly before he had visited Rembrandt, who showed him a drawing in the style of Annibale Carracci (1560-1609). Huygens thought it might be an original Annibale because of the 'force' {hardiesse) of the pen lines. Yet he felt the need to look further into the matter and therefore asked his brother Christiaan (1629-95) to visit Everard Jabach (1618-95), me most prominent art collector and dealer in Paris. 'I am asking you this for a specific reason. Reputedly he possesses, among other things, some 50 landscape drawings in pen and ink by Annibale Carracci, and [the Amsterdam art dealer Gerrit] Uylenburgh says that among those there is one with lots of water and little figures who are bathing themselves.'2 If Christiaan came across this drawing, his brother requested that he 'quickly make a little sketch [of it], no matter how bad, as long as one can distinguish at least where the figures are, and how many of them there are, to know with more certainty if the one that Rembrandt has in Amsterdam, where one can similarly see figures swimming by this same master, is not a copy' (figs. 31 a-c).' Constantijn's request seems a somewhat surprising way to go about establishing the authenticity of the drawing Rembrandt had shown him. Rather than carefully analyzing the characteristics of the work at hand and comparing it to more firmly attributed works by Annibale, he seems merely interested in the boldness of the strokes. This will be easier to understand it we call to mind the circumstances of the time. Seventeenth-century ^^J^^T advantage of having published oeuvre catalogues at their disposal. They could <*£*^ ongmals by a master they knew of one in the vicinity or ^^^^^ |Hough this would not give them a clear idea of the ^^^^tj that couldshed *e material increased the importance of any P^0^^^^ Huvgens Jr.'s interest in hght on the status of a work under consideration. Indeed, Constantijn Huygen J 63 ORIGINAL OR COPY THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR distinguishing an original from a copy adumbrates a widespread concern of seventeenth-century art lovers. Implied in Constantijn's request is the opposition between an original (in Dutch principal ox less frequently origineet) and a copy (kopie). This pair of terms features prominently in inventories and catalogues, in disputes about authenticity in legal documents, in personal writings and in the treatises on judging pictures' that had started to appear in the mid-sixteenth century. Both art-theoretical writings and personal documents confirm that the distinction between original and copy was one of the key concerns of seventeenth-century connoisseurs. According to the learned art lover Franciscus Junius (1589-1677), who lived in the Netherlands for fifteen years before moving to England in 1619, the most important skill for the connoisseur of his day was quickly to distinguish an original from a copy. This was not an easy task, he wrote in 1638, as others that are unexperienced in these things cannot perceive any difference'.4 Indeed, in the 1607 minutes of the Guild of St. Luke in Amsterdam, the city's professional organization of painters and related craftsmen, mention is made of laymen who had been duped because they could not tell copies and 'rubbish' from good quality pictures, resulting in their purchase of bad pictures for high prices.5 Similar problems pertaining to copies and poor quality pictures sold as originals surface in the minutes of The Hague Guild of St. Luke in the 1630s,6 and again in 1700 in a petition submitted by the fraternity of painters to the burgomasters of Amsterdam. In this document, the painters object to the fact that house painters and glassmak-ers were entitled to judge pictures at public sales in Amsterdam. How, they asked, could these craftsmen judge 'what is good, what is beautiful and what are copies or originals'?" A unique letter from a duped customer offers a glimpse of a buyer's perspective on such a deceit. In 1645 a certain Mr. de Meulenaere wrote to the art dealer Matthijs Musson (1598-1678), from whom he had bought two paintings as originals by Rubens and Snvders: 'I am very surprised that you treated me so. It is not the deed of an honest man to thus sell to someone who has little knowledge of paintings. I asked you several times if these were originals, and I trusted you; yet I found myself badly duped.'8 The number of copies circulating on the art market must have been high. Copies and imitations of Bosch, Metsys and Hans Bol, quite a few of which were fraudulently signed, had been flooding the art market as early as the sixteenth century.9 According to the painter and art theorist Karel van Mander (1548-1606), Hans Bol (1534-93) even stopped painting in oil altogether because not only were his pictures frequently copied in Antwerp but these copies were sold as originals.10 noi«e N° STme tefm eX1Sted yet f°r forSeries> but fhe interest of seventeenth-century «*T ov rZ 'nKdlStlngUishmS between originals' and 'copies' was clearly fueled in part by C-J Zif; kuWaS krgdy f°r this «™ the Italian scholar Giulio dlX:Lr^ PHyS1Cian t0 P°Pe Urban VI11 <'568-*44) and a sharp-eyed art ^ l643,'« 1653 and 1666, respectively.'" Works in the style of Wouter Knijtt na7 'Jan Miense Molenaer and Godfried Schalcken (1697) were attested by some to be ongi-1 ^tncipaelen) and by others to be copies.- In 1701, a painting attributed to Gerard ter Borch -n nVCn ^ SubJect of » bet. Constantinus Franeken had been planning to sell it as the first lot dn au«ion, the slot commonly assigned to the item expected to fetch the highest price, Mr hCr gentleman ehallenged him, stating that the work was merely a copy. To solve the matter, 65 the eye Or toe CON NO I SS F.Ii r ItGINAl or COPY • ■ bv Ter Borch from out of town and asked a group of art ^rx^^Ä -thc end ,he bet was settied w,tt...... a winner" . .........***** Hehate in seventeenth-century Holland focused on Italian a... . , • opventcentn-cenrury i iuu<"i"1UVU3VU iwuun ThC ^1 -s familL were the paintmgs ongi- tD mcr Hcndrik de Fromantiou (1633/34-after 1693), dismissed twelve of them as copies 2* the artist, art theorist and biographer Arnold Houbraken (l66o-£9>. Fromantiou nvav even have suspected that the works were forgeries done at the request of Uylenburgh himself 'Having in the past been "on the galley" (the expression commonly used ,n Italy for those who paint for cutthroats) and having himself painted for Uylenburgh, [Fromantiou] knew how that fox did business, and designated them copies.'25 Fromantiou's charge sparked Uylenburgh to defend his reputation. He traveled to Berlin to speak with the elector personally and to show him a testimony of his trustworthiness from the burgomasters of Amsterdam. In order to solve the controversy, the elector commanded Fromantiou to bring the pictures back to Amsterdam and confirm before experts in the art of painting that the works Uylenburgh sold were not true originals, but merely later copies.'2' In May 1672 Fromantiou indeed traveled to Amsterdam with the pictures. As Uylenburgh and Fromantiou could not agree on who were to be the judges in the matter, they each gathered statements from a range of painters and connoisseurs. This resulted in more than 50 expert opinions. All the Fromantiou attestations were negative, those gathered bv Uylenburgh positive. Although the first batch of negative criticisms that Fromantiou had gathered, convinced the elector to return the pictures to Uylenburgh, Fromantiou never actually managed to prove that the works were copies. None of the painters or art lovers he consulted would go that far. Their statements merely criticized the quality of the paintings, which they said were too poor to be by the purported Italian masters (see also below, chapter 3). Uylenburgh thereupon protested to the elector that Fromantiou had not fulfilled his mission and that he was merely trying to ^amage the dealer's reputations Only one of the twelve controversial pictures can still be identi-bur^^"1?^ DaminZNude Children, now in the Sbc Collection in Amsterdam.28 Uylen-not a new anr'b ^ ^ ^ ^ * aCC°rds with P^ent-day scholarly opinion. It ** earlier in the cen3' "L 1 ^ °f ^ Contested Pictures bore the same attributions they had In almost TlT T h ^ ^ ^ °f the fam°US Reynst collection in Amsterdam, certain paintings were c "T^ dep°sitions in whi^ painters and art lovers asserted tf* According to the first treat"' A ^ ^ the ongmds on which the copies were b« Verses manieres dg pei*,°^ Solely to 'judging pictures', Sentimens sur la distinction * Printmaker Abraham Bo^nT" ^J™™"" & origtnaux d'avec leur copies, written bv the w"e expected to command TheJ' T ***** the ^ of ski11 ^ ^cessful y were able not only to attribute paintings to a certain V*# 66 Illl Ml Ml I'll I CONNOISSEUR ORIGINAL OR COPY on the basis of knowing just two or three works by him, provided he [the painter] had hardly Changed his manner', they could also recognize copies 'without ever having seen the original'/" Tellingly, Bosse focused his treatise largely around the question of how to differentiate between originals and copies. Practical Methods to Distinguish Originals from Copies RESOLVE VERSUS INHIBITION When in 1663 Rembrandt showed Constantijn Huygens the Younger a drawing in the style of Annibale Carracci, Huygens peered at the force or boldness {hardiesse) of the pen lines in order to determine if he was looking at an original or a copy. While Huygens could have learned how to recognize this boldness at first hand from talking to artists and art lovers or from his experience as a draftsman, he could also have done so from the literature on art. The approach he adopted was recommended and explained in contemporary treatises that provided amateurs and collectors with advice on how to distinguish originals from copies. The qualities to be sought in a painting, they wrote in terms that varied somewhat from one author to the other, were spontaneity, resolve and unity. The Italian connoisseur Giulio Mancini advised art lovers to look for passages that showed 'not so much the observation of nature as the pride and resolution of the manner with the know-how of the inventor [maker]', that is: passages showing bold inventiveness as well as experience in how to render the subject at hand convincingly.'0 In the first version of his manuscript on painting, Discorso dipittura (c. 1617-19), he referred to muscles and drapery folds as examples of passages that could be telling, while indicating with three dots of elision that he meant to elaborate further on the matter.3' He also noted that colors are always more unified in originals, as these are older, which seems to imply that he was talking about distinguishing old originals from recent copies.32 In the second version of his manuscript (c. 1620), however, he left the remark about color out and focused instead on the 'perfection' and 'boldness' (Jranchezza) of the master's touch. While he does not explain what 'perfection' entailed other than saying that it should match the master under whose name the work is sold (his usual level of quality),35 he is quite specific when discussing the boldness characteristic of originals. It can be recognized especially in those parts that demand resolution and cannot be well executed by way of imitation, as is true in particular for hair, beards and eyes. Ringlets of hair, if imitated, will betray the laborious effort of the copy and if the copyist does not want to imitate them, then they will in that case lack the perfection of the master. These elements of painting are like the strokes and groups of letters in handwriting that require a master's boldness and resolution. The same can be observed in those spirited passages and scattered highlights that a master renders with one stroke and with a touch of the brush that is inimitably resolute; as in the folds and highlights of drapery, which depend 67 ORIGIN m or con i 111 i Y i more on the fantasy and resolve of the master than on the verisimilitude of the thing represented." Although Mancini was the first to write a manual with the sole purpose of helping art lovers develop their eye, his thoughts were not new. As early as 1555, students of ancient coins had already been advised to look for details in which the master's manner was most evident, such as hair, eyes, hands and folds of drapery. In his treatise on coins, Enea Vico (1523-67) stated that the difference between the skill and the comeliness (venustd) of ancient coins and the 'inferior quality' of modern replicas would he most visible in these areas.« In the field of painting, the earliest artists'biographers, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) and his northern colleague Karel van Mander (1548-1606), had voiced comparable thoughts: the individuality of an artist's manner could best be recognized, they suggested, in passages that as a rule were inimitable. For example, Vasari praised the spontaneous and free brushwork of Titian's late style and stressed that it was particularly hard to imitate. As he did on numerous occasions, Van Mander repeated and underlined Vasari's remarks when discussing Titian's late style.36 Yet he also developed some new thoughts of his own about which elements in a painting were particularly characteristic of the individual style of an artist. Even when working after nature, wrote Van Mander, there are certain features that one cannot learn from nature itself or from copying another master's manner, namely leaves, hair, air and drapery {b/aden, hayr, locht, en laken). Their depiction depends on the artist's individual spirit {gheest), the only mentor that can teach one how to depict these elements.5" However, this did not mean that an artist was limited to one way of depicting a given feature, such as leaves; nothing prevented him from inventing different ways.38 Like Mancini about 1620, in 1638 Franciscus Junius explained the difference between originals and copies in terms of resolve versus inhibition. When describing the connoisseurs of his day, he stated that they recognize a perfect and natural force of grace in the originalls, whereas in the copies they can see nothing but an unperfect and borrowed comilinesse (venusta*)'.* Fort> years later, in his treatise Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: anders de zichtbaere werelt of 1678, Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78) underlines Junius's observation. He underpins the legitimacy of the observation by referring to the same ancient writer that Junius had cited before him, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In the first century B.C. the latter had already emphasized originals have a pleasing gracefulness' [bevallike lusticheit) about them, while copies contain one or more elements that do not derive from nature but are the result of painstaking labor {j>V"' lijken arbeyt)* Van Hoogstraten compares painted copies to printed texts set by an focapj** typesetter after a hard-to-read manuscript. In a painted copy, as in a badly set text, the of the original are surrounded by mistakes that confuse or reverse their meaning. The del*** he adds, take their heaviest toll in the general harmony and grace of the work/' Unfomm^ ' neither Junius nor Van Hoogstraten, whose treatises are both rather theoretical in nature *** concrete example of where such a difference could be perceived. Abraham Bosse, the Parisian printmaker and art theorist, provided a much more \ 68 TIM I N I OF THE CONNOISSEUR ORIGINAL OK (OI'V analysis in 1649. Much like Junius before him Ur U I u the same perfection he perceives in the T " ^ ^ * nCVer the work of another, but dso ZnČ^ZTÍ^ T ^ °™ "* C°pÍCS tures that more than others will X£^T^ÍT ^ ^ * Ae tauchc. «■ He then goes on to d srZi n betT ^TTž ^ ^ ^ finÍBhh* r 1 „ " aiStmgUlsh betwccn minutely painted works and those executed more freely or artistically Paintings done in 'a free or bold manner, 6c which are in some w y artisticallv touched and of a great unity' are particularly hard to imitate, as the artists often cut their brushes especial y for painting details such as wisps, tufts and curls of hair. In order best to render a specific detail, they will customize their brushes to give them a rounder tip, pointy edges or irregular shapes « By comparison, finely painted pictures are easier to copy, as they are usually done with the kind of pointed brush every artist owned.- Thus, the style of the work had a clear influence on the extent to which it could successfully be copied, and hence on the challenge it posed to the connoisseur. Boldly painted works were easier to determine than those more finely painted.45 Bosse adds that copies done when the original is still 'fresh' ifraiche) tend to approach the original the best since it is virtually impossible to recreate the effect that time has on painted color. This remark indicates an awareness of the ageing of paint and subsequent color change, which Mancini had briefly touched upon earlier.40 Elsewhere, Bosse expresses his belief that every painter usually had something characteristic in his manner: 'if it is not in the air, the disposition, the arrangement 6c division of the figures he wants to represent in it [i.e. the painting], it will be in the shapes or the palette of colors, or the handling of the brush.'47 The handling of the brush could thus be characteristic in his view, but this was not necessarily the case. Nonetheless, many early writers on connoisseurship place special emphasis on 'manner' when analyzing the characteristic 'spirit' of individual artists. As André Félibien (1619-95) understands it, manner originates directly from the imagination. Diversity of manners, he states, is a result of following the imagination rather than nature.48 This line of thought is already encountered in Vasari and Van Mander. The implication is that freer, more imaginative brushstrokes lead to a more clearly recognizable manner and that copies in which the artist did not directly follow his imagination but merely tried to imitate another master's manner are the result of quite a different working process, marked by a lack of imagination and a certain inhibition. In a discussion of originals and copies, this leaves an important question unanswered. What if a copyist uses his imagination after all? What if he does not copy every brushstroke literally but recreates the picture with a certain measure of freedom? This question was first brought up by Abraham Bosse, in countering a potential objection against his method of differentiating between originals and copies by looking at the spontaneity or inhibition of the brushstrokes. What if a good painter copied a mediocre work, he asked, and in doing so, freely improved on it? He answers his own question by stating that this case was quite unlikely. Why would a gifted painter copy a work of mediocre invention it he could create better works himself? To which Bosse rejoins that if a painter improved a painting while copying v , . . . , , . „ the nlace of the original by his hand .4" Thus, by following it, then his copy would in a way hold tne piace ui & : , • . Vy . ... r.thcr than literally following the copy, a good painter could, his own imagination while copying, ratner «huj j as it were, create a new original from a copy. 69 ORIGINA1 OH 0>n THF. IYI Of 1111 C ONNDiss, i | fa fa tc„inK that 1W is inclined to classify such a freely painted copy as anew or,gIri.|. . ., 1 , ,y ^r. on connoisseurship, he distinguishes between originals and copes with-1 r.rc stories for works that do not comfortably fit ,n either category, such a, T Jc\ ' or free imitations. No separate terms had yet been coined for these types of tOrgCn0S: When their dubious status was recognized, it could be indicated roughly with terms ? ilreadv in use by pointing at a 'false signature' (e.g., Guevara - 'falsamento inscripto'), M**ng a pictUte ill tht W ('manicr. 'handclingh') of another painter, or by identifying speohc elements that were copied from earlier works. The example of forgeries demonstrates that in order to really understand the seventeenth-centurv distinction between originals and copies, it does not suffice to look only at what outward signs that were thought to betray copies and originals. The ways in which seventeenth-century painters and connoisseurs defined the terms 'copies' and 'orginals' are also relevant. These terms cannot simply be equated with what they generally denote today. DEFINING ORIGINALS According to Mancini, the term 'original' was used for paintings in the same way as 'archetype' was used for manuscripts - the first one made.5' Junius specifies that 'the first works that able masters did after life itself are here called original pieces {originele stucken)" in the Dutch version of his treatise On the Paintings of the Ancients (1641).52 He had not defined the term original' in the earlier English version of his treatise, and the reason he chose to do so in the Dutch version may be related to his decision to translate 'original' with the term origineel', which was at the time very rarely used in Dutch. Far more common was its synonym 'principael'.r> This would also explain why Junius tells us how the term is used in his treatise rather than calling it a general definition. In Bosses treatise the term original is defined as 'an object of which one cannot find a similar one in the natural world'* Like Mancini and Junius, Bosse avers that an original, unlike a copy, is not based on a pre-existing work. It is thus inherently novel, the invention of a painter or draftsman using the power of his imagination « In Junius's definition originals are done by 'capable masters' (treffelicke meesters), thus not by inferior masters or pupils, which allows him to associate originals with 'grace' and a certain level of quality* In the definitions of all three writers, the term 'original' is defined in contradistinction » its opposite, the copy." Nonetheless, originals could partially be based on copies of another artist l work, a practice that seventeenth-century Dutch writers called 'rapenV* A wedding invento? dated 1679 even explicitly mentions the use of copies of another painter's work as models for ** 217a Creatl°nS:'Vari°US m°dels t'modellen ], painted by myself after Poelenburch, did no le ° 7 StUdy bel°nS t0 mX P^ice of painting.'* This fairly widespread cus«>* ated 1 °f b0rr°winS or Par^ copying was permitted and new £^ ;ot :;r:d that h had to be ^ ^ cw** 5 P aure, not unlike the way in which painters would integrate partial studies and 70 the eve of the conn oisseur orioinai thcv had explored in their df&wino? into ■ n*i«4 < and Design'). Cleverly integral,TJ^LZZ « ^ Tu "* ''"^ C^*"" cording to the art lover Jan dc Bis,ZlZ 8 ^ """^ " *cse I"*** A- all else in paintings by g cat mas, s, h X l' ,"77 ^ b°rr°Win,?S abo™ When an artist added faulty ^cSt^ .u -l Tk f,, h's coP'es- however, he detracted from the reputation of the ongmal. Th,s was espeaally meretricious when the origina! was by a famous master. According to Philips Angc (,5,8-after t664), the connoisseurs of his ,,me would certainly no, be fooled by such dishonorable creations.6' NON-ORIGINALS AND VARIOUS TYPES OF COPIES By the end of the seventeenth century, a new term had come into use for works that consisted largely of elements taken from other paintings, the Italian word 'pasticcio'.6' Roger de Piles explained the term in his treatise L'idee dupeintreparfait (1699) as follows: Paintings that are neither originals nor copies are called pastiches, from the Italian pas-tict, which means pastries, because as the different things that flavor a dish are mixed together in order to produce a single taste [un seul gout\ so, too, all of the imitations that compose a pastiche serve no other aim than to make one single truth [une verite].^ In order not to be fooled by such a work, De Piles advises the reader to 'compare it to their model and study the style {gout) of the design and of the coloring, and the character of the brush'."4 Thus a new category was created for pictures that seemed neither originals nor copies. The type of free and improved copy that Bosse could not readily classify was also given a more precise description in the later seventeenth century. The Dutch painter and art theorist Willem Goeree (1635-1711) even advised artists warmly to practice what he called 'masterly copying'. In his treatise Inleiding tot depraktijk der algemeene schilderkonst of 1670, Goeree recommends that one should first judge the original carefully and subsequently try to outdo its maker in areas in which the latter had failed. This practice, he explains, is very different from the simple copying done by apprentices when they learn how to handle the brush and how to develop a manner of painting.65 In 1699, Roger de Piles classified copies into three different types: copies that were faithful and slavish, copies that were free and unfaithful, and copies that were both free and faithful, the last ones being by far the hardest to detect. Although De Piles was the first to assign a specific category to copies showing force and freedom in the handling but not matching the design of the original, Mancini had already demonstrated awareness of such works, Mancini had stated that characteristic elements such as ringlets of hair betrayed the copyist if he had tried to follow his example literally, showing effort rather than resolve (a faithful and slavish copy). Moreover, 1 . , r • ac ~ +ua ^.ri.rinil in order to achieve a certain looseness, his he believed that if a copyist deviated from the original in orcier to a _ r u nnH nnfliithtu copy; see above, Resolve versus work would lack the original's perfection (a free and unraicnrui yy, Inhibition'). the eye oe the connoisseur original or copy PARALLELS BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE As we shall see, the observations and interpretations recorded in seventeenth-century art-theoretical writings show striking parallels with opinions that emerge from notarial documents, guild statutes, inventories and personal documents. The different sources combined give us a telling glimpse of seventeenth-century connoisseurship. The scant evidence available suggests that at least some able connoisseurs judged the originality of a painting much like the art-theoretical treatises advised. For example, when Louis-Henri Comte de Brienne (1635-98) described in his diary that the collector Everhard Jabach and the painter Charles le Brun (1619-90) had tricked the Duke of Liancourt (1609-74) by selling him a copy by Sébastien Bourdon (1616-71) as an authentic masterpiece by Annibale Carracci, he explained: 'I noticed that Bourdon had applied his manner in some of the drapery folds and that made me aware ol the deception.He also implied that finely painted works could be particularly troublesome when he wrote that although certain copies were easy to recognize, 'when it comes to paintings by Gerrit Dou, one can be deceived. I have a copy of one which fooled many good painters'.7' Another significant insight comes from the diary of Paul Fréart de Chantelou. When discussing with Bernini the difficulty of distinguishing copies from originals, the Italian Fig. 33 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Singing Lute Playe r, c. 1624, canvas, 100.3 x 83.5 cm. Kremer Collection 73 ORIGIN > K or> i ii i i i <'i hi ,, ,,, „h * r P°rc<:Uis' but th« >' «" subsequently overpay Balthasar Gerbier U,. 1 ^ T bc calkd * 'P»eeUis' anymore. Similarly, the (-»** (w-iMj). who worked as an art agent for the British kin,, .dentiried as ' 74 rm n 1 01 nil- connoisseur original oh ( 0r» Raphael a picture in very poor condition 'rename u . •, , Margrict L Eikem. HoLcs has found n e S"mC ' "™ ™ ****'^s i ?u • . j tne sources, sound technical knowledge of paintings and their ageing process was widespread among both painters and mnn • PainflnK« .1 ^ so'ru- i i. , " painters and connoisseurs in the seven- teenth century/0 This makes it a the more likrlv — i , , . , • ; . • memore Hkcly that early experts had a keen eye for damaged and overpainted pieces. 7 "*"mgcu Tfo Reputation of the Copy Although, as we have seen, the distinction between originals and copies played a crucial role in seventeenth-century connoisseurship, copies were not always disparaged, and ,n certain circumstances could be valued highly. In general, they enjoyed a higher status then than they do today. Sheer ability to produce a good copy was considered to be a valuable talent. When Van Mander praises the specific qualities of painters from antiquity, he not only mentions Zeuxis' talent at painting fruits, Tymanthes' intelligence at incorporating hidden meaning into his works and Apelles' grace in all aspects of painting, but also Nicophanes' talent in copying other masters' works.8' Similarly, Van Mander praises certain contemporary painters, including the son of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, for their skill in copying other masters.82 Copying famous predecessors was not only part of the standard curriculum of apprentice painters. It could also be a means to acquire a reputation for oneself. If done very well, it could be a means to show one's virtuosity, especially if the copy fooled connoisseurs. Some copies were even legendary, such as Andrea del Sarto's copy after Raphael's Portrait of Leo X with Two Cardinals (figs. 34~35).83 According to Vasari, Andrea del Sarto did such a good job that he even fooled Raphael's assistant Giulio Romano (c. 1499-1546), who had worked on the painting. A cross scratched into the copy when the paint was still wet convinced Giulio that he had indeed been deceived. A copy by Rubens after Titian and one by Lievens after Ketel were similarly celebrated.84 According to some, copies as excellent as these were even better than the originals. Man-cini relates that Cosimo de Medici (1642-1723), the grand duke of Tuscany, believed that copies that cannot be distinguished from the original when they are both present are to be preferred over the original, for they have two arts in them, the art of the creator and the art of the copyist.8' Mancini himself calls such works 'true jewels among the paintings' (veramentegioiefra lepitture). It was not below the status of a great master to copy a work by another great master. We know that several well-reputed painters were indeed commissioned to create copies, and they did so very successfully. For example, Poelenburg's (159V95-1667) copies after Elsheimer (1578-1610) were said to be better than the originals, and Willem van Mieris (1662-1747) was paid well to copy works by his father, Frans van Mieris (1635-1681). The owner noted that they passed tor the originals; indeed, after the owner's death they were actually sold as such. a r.u Jnthe seventeenth century is complicated by the tact Assessing the reputation of the copy in the sevenrecni j J ' *u 1 , , f r • ™,i1H refer to cheap trash or deliberate forgeries, that the term had a wide range of meanings. It could rererroLi.cp * l , 6 , • t« tUP TJvlenbunrh case the word copv was used but also to highly sought-after collector's items. In the Uylenourgn 1. 75 ORIGINAL OR COPY Fig. 35 Andrea del Sarto (after Raphael), Portrait of Leo X with Two Cardinals, 1624, panel, 159 x 119 cm. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples thijs Musson to enquire about some works being purchased from him by the duchess of Lorraine (1608-57). Huygens wanted to know if one of them might be a copy by Joos van Cleve (c. 1485-1540/41) after an original by Quinten Metsys (1456/66-1530).92 Moreover, copies after famous originals could value much more than an original by a lesser master. Art theorists gave various reasons for this phenomenon. Hoogstraten, for example, stressed that whereas bad copies harmed the masters reputation, good ones helped to spread a master's fame.- Copies also had the virtue of preserving the appearance of lost originals, as was pointed out by Federico Borromeo (1564-1631) and Filippo Baldinucci (1624-96).<* Moreover, good copies provided delight through their successful imitation, according to Mancini and Baldinucci,- and they augmented the supply of excellent pictures.96 In the early eighteenth century, Jonathan Richardson (1665-1*5) explained «g^«^fl why copies of good originals are often better than originals by lesser artists: A copy at ven good Picture's preferable to an indifferent original; for there the invention is great deal of the expression and disposition and many times good hints of the colouring, drawmg 77 ORIGINAL OR COPY THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR r An indifferent original hath nothing that is excellent, nothing that touches and other qualities An incl.tte >, - ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 78 CHAPTER ^ By HI. Hand': ThePafadwi of Seventeenth-Century (;()nn,„ss,„rsh,p Introduction Whether seventeenth-century painters and connoisseurs had a different understanding of authenticity than we do today has been the subject of much debate. Several scholars have even wondered if present-day connoisseurship is anachronistic in its efforts to distinguish the hand of a seventeenth-century master from those of his assistants and pupils. Was it not common, they ask, for a seventeenth-century master to collaborate with his assistants and to sell the various studio products under his own name? Present-day connoisseurship still however tends to differentiate sharply between paintings believed to be purely autograph work and those done in part or entirely by assistants. The difference in the sales value between accepted originals and studio work can amount to millions of dollars.1 Yet it is uncertain whether the distinction underlying valuations of that kind correspond with seventeenth-century categories of thought. There can be no doubt that connoisseurs in the seventeenth century were keen to attach names to paintings. In fact, attributing pictures seems to have been an entertaining pastime among the upper echelons of society in Europe. King James I (1566-1625) reputedly removed the labels from his paintings to see if his courtiers could guess who made them.' A letter sent from Paris by the Dutch scientist and art lover Christiaan Huygens to his brother Constant^ m The Hague shows that these rather playful attribution debates were not an exclusivelv Bnnsh Phenomenon. After visiting the Flemish dealer Valcourt with a group of Pans.an connoisseurs, ^nnstiaan wrote to his brother on 1 June 1668: You would have had unparalleled pleasure * see [the pronounce on the authenocity of chose [Valcourfs] ceney; only ,„ conclude in the end that out of 300 draw.ngs that ^ there were bu, two originals. I would give anyth.ng to sec m^ ^ drawing collection], with you [listening] beh.nd the Open v. 81 BY HIS HAND THE EYE OF THE CO**Ofj place, tin m m* no shortage of'controllers', of which I was one of the minor figures, Who challenged the attribution of what he [Jabach] believed to be true (m.lio |<„ma_ nos and Raphaels. This drove him into a rage that made us all laugh, so much so that no comedy could equal this get-together.1 Christians account is so vivid that it is not hard to imagine the excitement of these early connoisseurs. However, the precise considerations and assumptions of the gentlemen remain elusive. On what grounds would they have attributed and de-attributed pictures? What elements were seen as particularly telling? Would they have differentiated between different types of studio products, and if so, how? Contemporaneous texts reporting the arguments brought to bear by early connoisseurs when making an attribution are rare indeed. Roger de Piles's imaginary dialogue from 1677, which I cited extensively above, suggests that some of these early experts were very sophisticated in their judgments (see chapter 1, A Glimpse of Seventeenth-Century Connoisseurship'). The protagonists even question the feasability and necessity of attaching a name to a painting at all. They cite the extreme difficulty of recognizing works made in a period during which an artist was changing his style, and how impossible it is to know all the painters from the past, especially those who worked for others and never acquired reputations of their own. Yet, primary sources addressing these issues are scant.4 Only in exceptional instances, moreover, do we know with any certainty which pictures early connoisseurs were discussing. We are therefore seldom able to clarify their comments by matching their accounts to the pictures at which they were looking: Reconstructing seventeenth-century views on authenticity is mostly a matter ol critically analyzing and connecting circumstantial evidence. At first, the available sources seem rather ambivalent. On the one hand, guild statutes make it clear that it was a matter of course tor master painters to sell works produced in collaboration with their studio assistants under their own name. On the other hand, some early treatises that discuss attribution practices advise art lovers to look for brush marks that seem distinctively individual, much like someone's handwm ing. This only makes sense in a system in which paintings were assumed to have been made J specific masters. This seeming contradiction I call the paradox of seventeenth-century connoisseur^ After reviewing the state of the question in present-day scholarship, I will have a closer loo ^ seventeenth-century sources and introduce some new material into the discussion. These !»o^ es, I am convinced, can help us improve our understanding of the meaning in the sevenr^intr century of authenticity and of the practices of signing and attributing pictures. The unde goal is to bridge contradictions in current scholarship and in doing so provide a clears ^ oi reference for attributions to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish masters such * ^ brandt Rubens and Van Honthorst (1592-1656). Although commercial and social *«f*^ I nave played an important role in seventeenth-century attribution practices, as they do -1 not speculate much about their impact. Instead, I concentrate mainly on the type ^ , nctions that Were and their implications for present-day connoisseurship-0 Nor 82 THE Ml Ol THE CONNOISSEUR W much attention to possible differences between the w I questions of attribution. As we shall see there » tti Y a"d buvers comprehended have differed greatly.? ' "ttlc rcason * ***** that their insights would Ernst van de Wetering, the head of the Rembrandt L D poignandy in ,992 when he gave a lecture" 2d ThT't IT' f ^ "* iSSUe m°St Anachronism?' at the 28"' International Art ultory LlmssIciHAr R century viewers found it self-evident to remrd 11 „,Ar ' If seventeenth- . l . . . , ,. uem to regard a" products of a given studio as works bv the master who headed the studio, even if they were carried out by othtrs, then 'the ,dea at Lb si ot the Rembrandt Research Project, namely that there is a need to isolate works of Rembrandt hand from that of his pupds and assistants, would be a complete anachronism, a wrongly applied projection of the nineteenth-century cult of genius to everyday seventeenth-century workshop practice'.8 In 1984 he had addressed the same concern in the second volume of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, stating that there was too little evidence to draw any conclusion with certainty.■ Since then, other scholars had pondered the same issue and voiced differing opinions. In 1988, Svetlana Alpers published her book Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market, in which she characterized Rembrandt as a talented artist and entrepreneur who created pictures, together with his studio, that give the effect of individuality but are not necessarily by his own hand.0 Taking issue with the Rembrandt Research Project, she pointed out that even if Rembrandt did not collaborate much with his assistants on particular works, he did attach his name not just to his own works but also to works done by others in his studio." Therefore, she stated, the master's oeuvre cannot simply be reduced to his autograph works.12 Eddy de Jongh had briefly touched upon this matter when he wrote about the attribution debate that was sparked by the Frans Hals exhibition of 1990." As the lack of consensus in the definition of Frans Hals's oeuvre became painfully clear (Seymour Slive approved of 222 paintings, while Claus Grimm agreed with only 145 of these), De Jongh wondered if what he called the 'nineteenth- and twentieth-century fixation on authenticity' can be justihed historically A seventeenth-century viewer, he wrote, would have certainly been aware ot the difference in value between originals and copies, and an ^^^^^^^^ done entirely by the hand of a famous master. Howeve, he su Pe p V rather than the exception in seventeenth-«T^ S various instances, the only assistants. More specifically, he believed Wj£the master's monogram, autograph detail in a picture from Frans Halss stuaio w m „ j„ Weterine weighed evidence both in favor and against the In his 1992 lecture, Ernst van de Wttering had g preference for autograph paint- idea that seventeenth-century painters and tnt Van de Wetering mgs by the master, without reaching a definitive conclusion. On 83 in his ii \\n argued, it was perfectly normal for pupils and assistants to work in the style of their master.f f0 ever, that did not mean that various types of studio products were interchangeable; he claimed that there was a 'substantial number of documents [- which Jaap van der Veen was in the process of assembling and interpreting -] indicating that autographness was relevant in seventeenth century Holland'.'4 He suspected that master painters may have worked in close collaboration with their studio all the more confidently since many art buyers could not easily recognize poor quality pictures. At the Berlin conference, Claus Grimm - who had not only sparked the Frans Hals at tribution debate in 1990 but had also just published a book on Rembrandt's portraits (1991) in which he limited the selection of autograph works even more strictly than the Rembrandt Research Project - also addressed this issue. In his lecture, 'The Question of Autographness and th Practice of Attribution', Grimm emphasized that much research remained to be done in order to get a clearer idea of seventeenth-century workshop practice and to establish better standards for attributions to old masters.'5 Close inspection of just a few pictures by Rembrandt led Grimm to conclude that the master must have collaborated with assistants in different ways. Pointing to the build-up of the 36 Rembrandt van The S^builder andHn ^ ^ ^ ^ % ^ ^ The Royal Collect ©Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, London «4 THE eye oe the connoisseur BY HIS HANI) paint in the man's face in The Shipbuilder anJ u;. urr i , \ , \ • w w , • c nJ°umer andH" Wife (1633), he observed that in the shadow on the right a relatively thin first aver s ■lnnliivl u . u • , j 1 /, , 7, r,s applied somewhat hesitantly, presumably by an assistant. It is topped by Confident strokes that Grimm identified as corrections by the master (fig. 36). By comparison, another group portrait done in the same year, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, lacks a similarly sharp distinction in its build-up. Instead, it seems to have been worked up more coherently and smoothly (fig. 37). This led Grimm to conclude that Rembrandt sometimes but not always had assistants execute the general building-up of the top layer, while adding the light and shadow himself. In a third example taken from the same year, Rembrandt's Portrait of the Remonstrant Minister Johannes Uyttenbogaert, Grimm pointed out differences in style and execution between Uytenbogaert's face and the definition of the hands (fig. 38). This, according to Grimm, indicated that the different parts were executed by different artists, that is, the head by the master and the hands by an assistant."' The extent of collaboration in Rembrandt's studio remains an issue of much debate. A number of specialists believe that Rembrandt tended to distinguish rather sharply between his own paintings and those done by pupils and assistants, and that - even though he may have sold non-autograph works as 'Rembrandts' - he would have priced them accordingly. Josua Bruyn ■ Lesson of Dr. Nicola* , /),. mv«, 169.5x «6.5 cm. Fig. 37 Rembrandt van Rijn, ^"^Gallery Maur.ts ihuis,Thc Hague Royal P 85 m ms hand THE eye OF the CONNOISsp,, Fig. 38 Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of the Remonstrant Minister Johannes Uyttenbogaert, 1633, canvas, 130 x 103 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam hddthe str°ng opinion that Re b . „ >» '995, Arthu wl ^ t" W°rki"g Prices maTh r " "°ne in bdi^tha< ,UCCd » Rembrandt's slheel°Ck dist'ng".shed four^ " m°re ^s^' *e m^r; Works b)o 5works done by an assist ^ of c°^borative works pro- ^tl0"al GaUeryofZ t" °" Ca"Vas by the mas!,S J °" basis °f a ^etch or drawng bv an assistant (such as the ;SSlsta"ts and retOUched ? 7*' ^ d°ne by an assist ^ P°rtraitS done ^ the master in which 7 has not been PraCtic«; in his «1 t' 2°°4' made a Plea for a thorOUg', ^^Tn°f °Pi"-nPa^d,y W' '"P"' of ^dents and assistants, ,n P'«ures were made ^7 * had ■ understanding rf«* gh stafces involved make it all the n»« 86 TH1 eye of the connoisseur by his hani) important to reconstruct the ideas of seventeenth-cent issues of authenticity. Ur^ Pa,nters ar*d connoisseurs concerning that mT M d— -^etical texts der Veen has written a ^ ^ then, Jaap van ventones in relation to issues K^tvSf^^ d°CUmentS ^ probate * V1 , r a «. L n autnentlcity His contribution, entitled 'By his Own Hand The Valuation of Autograph Paintings in the Seventeenth Century', was published ,n ACoZ0f Rembrandt Paintings, volume 4g*g In the appendix, he transcribed 36 notarial document concerning pictures by or after Netherlandish masters (including Porcellis, Bloemaert, Jordaens and Den Uyl) and Italian masters such as Titian and Caravaggio. One difficulty attending the interpretation of this material is that most of the documents categorize paintings as either an original' {prinapael/origineet) or a 'copy' {kopie)» The same holds true for seventeenth-century inventories and sales catalogues. As we have seen in chapter 2, the most commonly used word for original' -principael- simply meant that the work was not a copy. The term did not convey a claim as to the execution of a work; a principael could well have been painted by several hands." Of the 36 documents published by Jaap van der Veen, only six refer specifically to the execution of a work.23 The paintings that occasioned these six disputes were said to be done 'by the hand of the master', sometimes even 'without help from others'. This suggests that buyers were indeed interested in knowing whether a painting was purely autograph. Van der Veen believes that this was true of well-to-do burghers who could afford the better paintings. (He assumes that issues of authenticity would not have been of great concern to the producers and buyers of cheap pictures.) Furthermore, he speculates that attention to autographness increased in the course of the century, reaching a high point about 1650. Regarding the vocabulary of connoisseurship, he proposes that the less commonly used term for 'original' {origineel) was used for completely autograph works.24 He therefore concludes that the objective of the Rembrandt Research Project - to distinguish the master's hand from those of his assistants and pupils - is not anachronistic. However, there is another way to interpret the evidence gathered by Van der Veen. His examples can profitably be compared to similar statements encountered in other countries. Specialists in Italian art have argued that claims that a given work was painted 'by the hand of the master' should not be taken literally. The Italian equivalent of this phrase,/.//, di sua mano 1 j .... -r • 1 • j tu.,t tuP ortist to whose name a work was attached took had a certain legal import. It implied that tne artisr iu wn & . .,. r • +•__,»,Wher or not he was phvsically involved in the personal, moral responsibility for its creation, whether or not ne " ' t mi + **. KrirW the contradictions in current scholarship by execution 25 In the following pages I will try to bridge tne conurauic r j cuuuii. in uic luuuw & r & Urir.o-ino- into the discussion a number of previ- re-evaluating some of the existing ^^J^^K taken from a kind of publiLon ously overlooked primary sources. Most of the n connoisseurship, the art- that remarkably enough has remained ^7^^^^ of thought, I will look at the theoretical treatise. To reconstruct seventeenths ^ ^ of distinctions made in importance attached to painters' names in genera oarticular, I will pav attention to the seventeenth-century inventories and notarial documents. p 87 ,<> his HAND TIIR V. N()|HSEl/p tinction betWcen works identified as by a master and those given to a pup.l. Sttbwap^ , ! 'I, .L uss the evidence that master painters sometimes sold entirely autograph pictures, asking I ^ cx!,nf .onnoisseurs may have had a special interest in such works. A related question ,s ht1 if mvihing we can deduce from master painters signing habits. Finally, I will look i,,,., seventeenth-century texts on connoisseurship, some of which were already briefly discussed in chapter 2, and further explore the insights they offer into the attribution of pictures. The Masters Name and Its Implications No longer the anonymous craftsmen they had often been in medieval times, successful early modern European artists were able to gain increasing fame and independence for themselves. Thev came forth from behind their works and placed themselves in the foreground, drawing attention to themselves by signing their works, initially with monograms, and later with their names spelled out in full. If they were really famous, their first names would suffice: Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt.26 In the Netherlands, the artist's reputation as the creator of'unique' works gradually increased over time. Symptomatic of this development is that, around 1600, print collectors started to organize their prints by artists' names, whereas sixteenth-century print collections had usually been grouped by subject.27 As the art market boomed in the early seventeenth century, more and more artists began to underscore their role as individual creators by signing their works, often still with monograms, yet increasingly with their full names.28 Although the signing habits of painters could vary considerably (Rubens, for example, barely signed his works at all), awareness ol artists' names increased greatly. An impressive array of artists' names occur in probate inventories throughout the century. Despite growing emphasis on the artist's individual name, the placement of a signature was not yet a sign of what we presently understand as individuality.29 It was common in the Netherlands of the early seventeenth century for masters to attach their names to paintings that were in part or largely executed by their pupils and assistants. This is wittily illustrated by a laudatory poem on Van Mander's Schilderboeck (1604) preceding the main text. The writer likens the book to a picture of Pictura, the personification of the art of painting. This metaphorical portrait has benefited from many contributions by others, the poet writes. Outside sources provided items of painted jewelry, much in the same way that Van Mander benefited from those who brought the art of painting to greater heights and thus enriched painting as an art. However, Van Mander deserves to sign the work as an 'original' ('principael'), since he is responsible for the most impressive part, a crown of pearls on Pictura's head. He would have made 'a mistake if he had not written his name at the bottom of the work'.- Admittedly, a lot of research remains to be done a* coZw crr' studi°habits-However' °n the basis °f the a-iiabie evidence*we can even as a T / C°uld function as * 'trademark', a 'logo of a studio stvle l^Z^^^d^ * Svctlar* Alpers, Ann Jensen Adams, ^ me Nygaard, respectively." However, it was not a guarantee that a work 88 thk i V i OF i in CONNOISSEUR BY HIS HANI) painted solely by the hand of the master. A signature Cod I h done by a student or assistant or even a work done in r, II u * mCanS f° aPProPnate a work in collaborate with another masters Distinctions in Seventeenth-Century Inventories and Notarial Documents Seventeenth-century inventories and notarial documents ?ivr f I t teenth-century categories of thought. Artists' names .«« i* 7 Crent vieW of seven" inventor.es from the beginning ?*, ^1^^^ ST" goods beionging to painters and colors bnt .so to borghers T.C2 JSCSJ works of art. Research ,nto mventones in Delft, Amsterdam, Antwerp, HaaHcm, Lei n Z Dordrecht reveals similar patterns in all these cities. While sixteenth-century inventories seldom provide the names of artists, around the turn of the seventeenth century there is marked rise in the number of pictures attributed to a particular master. In Antwerp, for example, by 1620 about a quarter of the paintings mentioned in notarial documents were assigned to a specific master." The frequency of attributions also increased in Amsterdam, while in Delft a growing number of attributions in inventories is observable in the 1640s and '50s.34 In Leiden, the number of attributed pictures in a sample of collectors' inventories from the 1650s and '60s was particularly high, amounting to about 40 percent of all works mentioned.35 Admittedly, it can be tantalizingly hard to interpret these early attributions. Seldom can we identify the works mentioned, while relatively little is known about the notaries and experts who compiled the lists.36 Moreover, the general boom in the production of paintings and the increasing numbers of works that were signed must have also influenced the listings. Yet, some general patterns are unmistakable. Firstly, there was growing awareness both of the names of specific master painters and of their hallmark styles. An inventory of the Leiden collector Hendrik Bugge van Ring mentions as many as 98 different painters' names and specifies that two pictures by Jan Steen (1626-79) and Gerrit Dou (1613-75), respectively, were done 'in their youth' ('in sijn jonckheyt*).» Secondly, an increasing number of descriptive terms were used to classify works/ Basically, two main distinctions were made, and these categories partially overlap. Pictures were often labeled as an original, a copy or a work in a certain master's style (see below) Another distinction concerned the master's share. The overwhelming majority ot the attributed works is given to master painters, but in a few rare instances, a picture is identified as by a pupil (^ of a master and/or mentioned as retouched (geretokkeert) by the master. d-tinctions further, I will briefly indicate the other descriptive ^^T^^ occasionally contain terms indicating that a picture was unfinished. For ~ described as gemodelt or gebootst ZoX2n »™ (not completed). Lastly, one also finds terms descriptive^ the q ln very general terms. For example, the 1682 inventory of the j. ^ ^ above.mentioned *55) mentions eleven 'sleghte schilderijen' (insignificant pain g unidcntified yet h d ed a level of d_ Phrases such as 'the master's own work or ^^k2 worthy of carrying the ity. The line between a work that could count as by the mast^s^ jo ^ on master's signature, and one identified as by a pupi a ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ of a 'pupil' in the individual master and his personal ^^^^ the littie available evidence suggests that the seventeenth century have been identified, owe , visiblv short of the masters works described as by .'pupil* and/or as 'retouched must have usual level of quality. ontracts and notarial documents, such as the This can be deduced from statements in co ^ ^ ^ underwent sufficient above-cited examples of Jordaens and Van Vucn , F7 91 BY his iianh thf' eyr of thr connolmrrj ivtom lung In I In- m.istcr it could be considered his work. Tims, a work that was expft it|v .,,„| fr be 'retouched' must have been I cheaper kind or" picture. Rubens sold retoiu lic«| gfudeni (, tor cheaper prices than his high** quality pictures. As he explained in a letter to the Hriri-,|, , f)| lector Dudley Carleton (1573-1632), well-retouched copies ... show more for their price'/ Tl„ mention of 8« retouched paintings in Rembrandt's inventory of 1656 suggests that Rembrandt also produced cheaper pictures; in fact, two fairly poor paintings in his manner carry inscription indicating that they were retouched by the master/7 As to work by pupils, the distinction between leerling or discipul'^ sometimes meaningful A discipul \s often a more advanced student, in training with his second master. However, the use of these terms varied from place to place and time to time.58 For example, an elaborate draft statute of the Haarlem painter's guild, dated 1631, uses the terms leerling and discipul interchangeably to refer to pupils in their first three years of training, distinguishing them from paid assistants or journeymen {werckgesel'or vrijegast). In order to become an independent master, one had to work at least three years as a pupil {leerling or discipul) and subsequently at least one year as a journeyman werckgeselor vrijegast) for a master.59 No seventeenth-century document lists a painting as by a gesel or paid assistant of a master painter, which suggests to me that their share in the studio production must have commonly counted as 'by the master' as long as it was done in the master's style. In some instances, journeymen or paid assistants even worked quite independently, creating works of their own invention and signing them with their own names. In Haarlem, this was not uncommon; Judith Leyster (1609-60) and Pieter de Grebber (1595/1605-1652/53) signed and dated paintings before they became independent masters.60 Because master painters had to pay the guild a much higher tee for having journeymen (paid assistants) than for having pupils in the studio, it seems unlikely that they would have sold a journeyman's work as by a werckgesel or vrije gast.bl To conclude, the seventeenth-century distinction between works that could pass as by a certain master and those ascribed to usually nameless 'pupils' of his cannot be equated to the present-day tendency to separate purely autograph paintings from works which were partialh or entirely done by pupils and assistants. Although it may not be possible to reconstruct exact!) where a seventeenth-century master would have drawn the line, the quality of'pupil work must have been visibly inferior to the usual quality of pictures sold under the master's name. Further Distinctions: A Preference for Autograph Pictures? If various types of studio collaborations - though certainly not all studio products - could the studio under the master's name, what value was enjoyed by these works? The °Penne^j master painters about their studio practices must have varied from one master to the next- ^ although some connoisseurs were able confidently to recognize a master's hand (see bcfcw> ^ tainly not all buyers had such a keen eye. Some, in fact, did not realize that a signed «* not necessarily painted by the master himself. A curious document in the Delft archive tfh* ^ such a misunderstanding. In 1644, « certain Sybert Dogger, the owner of a painting 10» 92 THI fyk Of im roNNnissinK »v his hani; Willem van Aelst (16,7-83), took out a notarized wager that his I feg to the signature to prove his point. He was challe u a wi,s by the master' refer" little-known painter of farm scenes, who stated that heel M *** (l62l/22'l659/66), a nature, the work was not painted by Van Aclst and that th I m°nstratc that' desPite the sig-gcr seemed unaware of the possibility that master j" ' ' *** ^ "'^ CVCn touched Dog-executed entirely by themselves and that. f^iV^ S'gn W°rks that they had *** *,«w» „r v.„ M„. a *■ - - Four legal statements among the 56 crotU^ a u t »'Knarure. of whether a certain picture was Z^^^^ £J — a certain rjndrickvan Leeuwen declared he S ken) one by Abraham Bloemaert and one by GiUis van Coninxloo and th "no one but the aforementioned two masters had worked on the aforementioned pieces'.- Similarly Ambrosius Bosschaert declared in 1615 that he had created a flower still life entirely by his own hand 'without anyone else having put their hand to it or worked on it'.** Jan Miense Molenaer (1609-1668) declared in 1653 that two paintings, a peasant scene and one with a 'surgeon' removing a stone from the head of a duped patient, had been made by him 'without anyone else having contributed anything to them'.66 Lastly, in a document dated 1658, two witnesses declared that Bartholomeus van der Heist (1613-1670) had stated that he had painted a certain picture of Diana and that it was an original, not a copy. When he was subsequently asked if anyone else had contributed to the piece, he shook his head. While Van der Heist may have been lying - since he only shook his head, he could always say that he had never actually said no - these documents are nonetheless revealing. They indicate that it was not self-evident that a work signed and sold as by a certain master was indeed entirely executed by him. They also show that some painters made a point of creating autograph works, and in doing so, provided both seventeenth-century buyers and present-day connoisseurs with the certainty that some of their works were executed solely by their own hand. Moreover, at least four owners were so keen on proving that their work was indeed by a specific master that they demanded a written guarantee, an 'expertise' or 'Gutachtung' avantla lettre. As to the manner in which painters presented their pictures when selling thern to customers, very little is known. One unique exception is the correspondence between Peter Paul Rubens and the British ambassador to the Netherlands, Sir Dudley Carleton. In exchange for Carktons collection of antique sculptures, Rubens offered him a choice of a number <^^*J hand', which he hid availL in his studio to the ^^^^^ leton did not have the opportunity to see counted as bv Rubens s extensively, in a letter dated 28 April x6x8. between five different hand, they were not painted solely by him. in tact, ^ ^ , contribution by a types of studio products: 'originals' by his hand; ^^^^ landscape specialist-); cop-specialist (an animal by Snyders or a landscape by '"^^.^j copy by a pupil that Rubens ies by pupils after his own work that he retouche ; one u^ ^ ^ works startec> promised to finish so well that it would count as an ongi by pupils and retouched by Rubens. 93 is 11 V \ P i ii i ['he copies and works begun by pupils tluf were subsequently rewnrkrd |,v r|„. ^ do not dtffci siffnini tntly ifl puce from originals In Rubrnss hand, lor example, a ,Ui;,|, (|,; I x toot painting of Saint Sebastian by Rubens had the same price - 300 gU&kfi - a„ a ,in . ' figure S % 7 root painting of Susanna that was started by a pupil and rcfou. lied |n [<,,; , worked up copv of a lion bunt (8 x 11 feet) carried the same 600-guilder price as a slightly I,,, original painting of I Xiniel in the lion's den by the master himself (8x12 feet). Be, r()( work is the onlv one we can identify, we cannot judge the extent to which this remarkable pri difference relates to the nature of the paintings. We do not know, tor instance, if the picnlr, ,it the hunt contained more figures than the I )aniel. We may take the relatively similar prices as strong indication that Rubens considered all these works to be of good quality, worthy of carrying his name and the stipulation 'by my hand'. Carlcton's choice was restricted to works Rubens described as by his own hand and the ones he did with specialists.''' For this reason, the correspondence between Carleton and Rubens has been interpreted as unique evidence that at least one affluent art lover had a preference for purely autograph originals."0 However, it seems more accurate to say that, offered works that were all considered to be by Rubcns's hand, Carleton picked those of the highest quality, regardlesttf whether thev were entirely autograph. Carleton did not eliminate paintings to which other masters or specialist assistants had contributed. Among his choices were a painting of Prometheus with an eagle by the animal specialist Frans Snyders (see fig. 49), and a painting of leopards with a landscape by an unnamed specialist.7' Moreover, he did not protest when Rubens let him know that his landscape specialist had worked up parts of several pictures that the master had described as purely by his own hand: 'According to my habit, I have taken a specialist gende-man to finish the landscapes only to increase the taste of Your Excellency, but in the other parts, please be assured that I have not allowed a living soul to touch these works', wrote Rubens on 28 May 1618."2 By that time, Carleton had also accepted a worked-up copy (the Lion's Hunt) and a work started by a pupil (the Susanna) as part of the exchange, after Rubens promised he would retouch them so extensively that they would have the same 'quality' {bonta) as originals by his hand.-' When describing the various pictures to Carleton, Rubens indicated subtle gradations m quality and price among works all described as 'by his hand'. As to what extent other masters differentiated between pictures they sold under their own names, we know very little. It seems IW* however, that master painters who collaborated with pupils and/or assistants in various wavs, Jordaens and Van Mierevelt (1567-1641), would have made similar price and quality aisrin"rU^' Interestingly, one such master, Gerrit van Honthorst, seems to have indicated variations m r quality of his paintings by altering his signature. Quality Distinctions Reflected in the Signature ,t Around 1650 Gerrit van Honthorst had the opportunity to collaborate with a sck* Uutch and Flemish painters on the decoration of the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten *#* ■ 94 rill. EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR by mis hani) the most prestigious painted interior created in the I) tribute to the deceased stadholder Frederik Hendrik ( ^ Ag°' WdS dcsiSned as a Amalia van Solms (1602-75). In the five large paintin p ~.l647) at the recluest of his widow, interior, he used two distinct signatures: 'GvHonZL^i ™ "onthorst Produced for this meaning in Latin made by Gerrit van Honthorst'(fies t T,^ ^ thc latter extensive research on three of the five canvases - All ' \ wh°conducted Anialia van Solms- Willem lis Reception^a'^W^LM^^F^H^^ v ; 114 JWlt* JS. P j Ma^ Stmrt uPon Arrival in the Netherlands-znd Frederik Hendriks Steadfastness - not ced distinct rftffc>J« ■ , ^ ana , P , ., Jj J, .,, . " ° Q1Stinct d,trercnces in execution between them. She considered Frederik Hendriks Steadfastness, signed with the longer signature, to be more skilfully and efficiently executed than the other two works. The figures are well-rounded and show subtle gradations in skin color, including a bluish middle tone largely lacking in the other works Sh thus speculated that the signature 'GvHonthorst' indicated studio products of lesser quality th the painting signed 'GvHonthorst fe[cit]\ While the master obviously thought all the pictures worthy of carrying his name, he seemed much more closely involved in the execution of the work signed with the longer signature.74 Although the most recent oeuvre catalogue does not distinguish various levels of quality among the pictures attributed to Van Honthorst, the articulation of these differences seems a worthwhile pursuit."11 Of the 295 history paintings and pastoral scenes labeled authentic, 31 carry the longer'GvHonthorst fe[cit]' signature. These include some of Van Honthorst s most famous masterpieces, such as his Saint Sebastian (National Gallery, London, see fig. 112) and the Merry Fiddler (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)/6 If authentic, these signatures certainly are worthy of further study. Only about 14 of the 224 portraits attributed to Van Honthorst in the catalogue carry the 'GvHonthorst fe[cit]' signature, which could mean that the master let apprentices work more on the portraits produced in his studio than on the history paintings." e an to Li Ft Flg. 39 Gernt van HonthVerzamelingen van M H canvas, 750 x 300 cm. bticnnng 95 rH E EYE Of ill I ay Nil 11 VNP Fig. 40 Gerrit van Honthorst, Willem Us Reception of Mary Stuart upon her Arrival in the Netherlands, 1649, canvas, 200 x 300 cm. Stichting Historische Verzamelingen van het Huis Oranje-Nassau,The Hague While Van Honthorst's practice may seem rather curious at first, an anecdote repeated by sever^ seventeenth-century art theorists, helps to explain it. Already in antiquity, they wrote, artists u^ their signature to indicate variations in quality. According to the ancient writer Pliny, some 0 most famous painters and sculptors had inscribed the majority of their works with a s^na^ disclaiming finality, such as Apelles faciebat' (being made by Apelles) or simply 'Polyclitus. putedly, they did so out of modesty to indicate that these artworks were not finished. ^ it gave them a means by which they could save face, should one such work be criticized. ^ could claim they would have made a desired correction if only the work had not been taken ro^ them by forces beyond their control. According to Pliny, only three artworks were known to^ a signature implying completion ('X fecit', 'Made by X'), testifying to the supreme coatfcfc*J the artists had in these particular pieces/8 In the seventeenth century, this story was parap rJ^ by Karel van Mander, Etienne Binet, Franciscus Junius and Samuel van Hoogstraten amo others.79 Thus far, this story has not been related to the signing habits of seventeenth-^'1^ Netherlandish painters. However, since Netherlandish painters regularly used Latin p r* 96 BY MIS M, lffcr ,6,,,, ,-anvas, 200 x JOO an. Flg. 4I Genit van Honthorst, *£^_SU^ ' StichtingHistorischeVerzamelmgenvanhetH are of the connotations of the when sigmng their works, and many of them probablyaw different Latin terms, there is every ^ ^ he was familu, -** fc Hen- theoretical account so literally that ^^"'^ fecif include h.„a ■ • painters who signed both with and ^ drick ter Brugghen <*»*0 (espccalh *~£tS£«* - to know to what extent these and other [» oi ^alm specific signatures to distinguish bctWC^ ^ price would have reflected such distinction . the Attribution of Pictures ^ ^ ^ Seventeenth-Century Insights ,nto ^ „ ^......n- Studlo prices and signing habits are -J*^ of J^,...... attribute seventeenth-century pictures. V r seventeenth-^ ^ ^ ainc abou, authenticity. In filling out early a***"" help us answer the question of whet face today. 97 i hi- r.YF, or mm M * N 7 R „ ,lin,i„gs could be of great importance for attribution,, the early..... ^though the design of patnrn^ ^ execution.g' Al mentioned in Clttpffl I, RlOf! early vv m oMin.Msseur.htr ***** » ^ p&*** I KftfKtCrM manner could best be apprehend^, IN B***"^ li^rtfin boWnetl Mid resolve. Such areas were seen as particularly harrl passages executed with a u ^ ^ intings done in a bold or free manner were more e^ to mutate, winch also cxP m. ' m ^ lse and fine manner. As a general r,;. the pamu s CMM ^ ^ op hjs im;1K,niltlon and inborn talent. As we ft) no, ^"^^'2^ „,,, bck. Of hair, rtagkf. ,n h.anls, the definition „feyts„ m.,s wherc.be master's manner could best be recognized. As mentioned before. Karel yan Mander had been eyen more explicit. In his view, a p*„,. ' -hatacteristic 'spirit' ('gheest') could best be recognized in the depiction of'leaves, hair.air Tnddrapenes'Cbladen.hayr,locht,en laken). Draperies, in particular, according to Van Mander. ^4 If II Manci"i himself d^not T" *JH& ^ CUnvas' »°-5 ' m cm. Rijksmuseum. An °WeVCr' hls *nalysis seems J? "•P8dfif sample of these confident drapery folds. Particularly the characteristic' U> if CXecUtion of drapery in Jan Steens pi*** scents that Van Dantzig called the 'mussel stroke'. Amsterdam- 's I II I Ml OF THE CONNOISSEUR Iy his hand reflected an artist's inventiveness nresnminK, k« < , f • , • Prefsumab,y because they allowed the painter the greatest free- dom of invention and execution, as thev can he A^^A • ., grearesr rree And colors «> ' y Can bC dePlcted in an endless variety of shapes, textures When Van Mander discussed the uniqueness of an artist's manner of painting he indeed frequently focused on characteristic details such as the depiction of hair and drapery. For example, when comparing prints by Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533) to similar works by Dürer (1471-1528), Van Mander observes that Lucas had a different, sweeter, more continuous manner of incision with which he depicted his receding and flowing drapery'*' (compare figs. 43 and 44). When discussing Holbein (i497/98-i543), Van Mander notes that a certain 'firmness in composing and painting' is visible in all his works, and that in his orderly way of building up his paintings he was Very different from other painters'. He explained this by pointing out how Holbein depicted hair or a beard. He would first paint the area broadly with perfectly accurate shadows, and once this layer was dry, he would paint the hairs or beard over it, in a very natural manner, with a free-flowing brush (fig. 45).85 As to the depiction of leaves, Van Mander praises Cornells van Molenaer (c. 1540-89) for having a 'more beautiful and painterly manner of depicting leaves' than any other artist he knew.86 In this context, it is important to realize that in Van Mander's time Netherlandish painters did not typically base their depictions of trees on close observation of nature but preferred to invent a manner that would convincingly evoke nature.*7 Fig. 43 Albrecht Dürer, M . R.jksmuseum, Amsterdam 99 ,n RH M xNP tuk Iy I Of iii k conn(„h,p >4H Fig. 44 Lucas van Levden, The Holy Family, c. 1506-10, engraving, iQ-9 x 14.6 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Fig- 45 Hans Holbein, Henry VIII, c. 1536, panel, 28 x 20 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisz* MaJrid ioo THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEUR BY HIS HAND Having a convincing manner and corresponding technini.e m mained important throughout the century compare fori Tt " pamt * dense foliage with Meindert Hobbcmas LtSS^ ^ ***** ^ a j „x tt , nasairydePlctl°n of leaves, often silhouetted against the sky (figs 46 and 47). However, very few painters (Jacob van Ruisdael being one of the exception^ combined their specific manner with botanical accuracy. By the mid-seventeenth century, Van Mander's observation that a painter's characteristic spirit could readily be recognized in the depiction of leaves was fairly widespread knowledge, as revealed in Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy's (1611-68) dictionary of painting terms, which lists 'the touch of trees' ('de slag van bomen'): 'One says that the trees in this landscape have been depicted with a very recognizable touch, or this Painter hits his trees well.''8 Van Mander's observation that the depiction of hair, skies and drapery revealed a painter's spirit was repeated by Samuel van Hoogstraten in 1678.89 Nonetheless, notions concerning which elements were most 'telling' varied from one au- i i IOI n\ ins HAND T,,F **■tW íhk(()n Fig. 47 Meindert Hobbema, Farm in the Sunlight (detail of the foliage), c. 1668, canvas, 81.9 x 664 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington thor to the next. For example, Cornells de Bie (1627-1712/15) believed that light and dark accents in the paintings of Gerrit van Honthorst were particularly 'spirited' ('gheestig'), while Paul Freart de Chantelou recorded in his diary that Bernini believed that the depictions ot hands were espe cially revealing.90 However, all these characteristics seem to have one common denominator, inventive and resolute execution. THE PARADOX OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CONNOISSEURSHIP So far, the elements described as important are those that show distinctly individual brus^ehanj Indeed, much like handwriting specialists, who look for resolute turns and CUIVe^8jJ 9 The writing, aspiring connoisseurs were advised to look for characteristic habits ot the ^ ^ ]s assumption that one can single out successfully the individual handwriting of a pan^ ^ ^ however to contradict what is known about seventeenth-century studio practice. identify individual hands if master painters signed works that they had not tfetfl" ^unship-handedly? This seeming contradiction I call the paradox of seventeenth-century conn 102 I 111 RYE OF THK CONNOISSEUR HY MIS HAND While a number of the above-mention 1 early modern connoisseurs were looking prm^lT^^ SU**ests that at least some individual hands, their thinking need St^ ^ °f ^ b™h and ^ Z the master s characteristic touch did not necessarily 1.1" StUdi° P™ice Their search for works. Two passages in Junius and Hoogstratcn l „„A ntUrr seventeenth-centurv masters always used to say, this does not mean that Rembrandt and other sevenrecmn j j 1 c+\,<>\r rrio-inals « However, it is further evidence the assistance of others in the productions of the" that we cannot assume a pnorr - as virtually all connoiss ur do that g painters created a core oeuvre of entirely autograph ^J^™ He _ not £ only painter and art theorist like Samuel van Hoogstraten this is not a problem one with this view, as we shall see."" distinction, not generally drawn in con- The dividing issue, to my mind is the css The passages ofa painting that early noisseurship, between masterly and subordinate p ^^.^ Qf authorship correspond closely, art theorists considered to be particularly telling as in . . .difficuit\ Although the «-U.it were seen as ma-si*-11/ as we shall see, to the parts of a painting that wc 103 m Ills 11 a n11 THR ".YE OP THE CON specific features they singled out could also refer to secondary nass-u/r* I i " 'eaves i tor example, were not necessarily key elements in a seventeenth-century paintii ' ments could he considered important if" they were executed soundly. In the histo r " "'' Rubens sent to Carleton, tor example, the figures, not the background lamk ipei elements. I suspect it was for this reason that he had his landscape specialist (pfobtbk ^' ^ sistant, since he is not mentioned by name) finish these secondary passages, while ' '^ ' ' leton that the other (read: key) parts were entirely by himself.v By all appearancesaSMlnn^(Jar century connoisseurs did not consider all areas of a painting equally important VVh^0"^^ brushwork, the art theorists and connoisseurs whose thoughts have come down to us^lT^'^ have been looking for bold, resolute and spirited strokes, that is, for touches srw mi SCernt° f • * c c * * muster This is a potential cause for confusion in present-day connoisseurship, in which subord' ments are studied with close attention.''8 MASTERLY PASSAGES In the art-theoretical literature, a certain looseness and boldness in the execution of sketches as well as finished paintings was associated with mastery. Willem Goeree, for example, explains in his 1668 treatise on the art of drawing that a finely executed drawing done in the 'reusel' technique (with parallel strokes placed immediately next to each other so as to create a uniform result) will not look 'masterly' ('meesterlijk') unless it also contains some quickly and loosely applied accents.gq Even Philips Angel, who believed it was better for painters to imitate nature as closely as possible rather than to develop a manner of painting, still strongly praised the curious looseness' (curieuse lossicheyt') in the brushwork of his favorite painter, Gerrit Dou.IO° Vasari and Van Mander considered masterly applied loose strokes not only difficult to execute, but also difficult to imitate and therefore all the more characteristic of the artist who had created them. Van Hoogstraten also praised the difficulty and mastery evident in loosely executed masterpieces.101 A term applied in French to freely and loosely applied brushwork m 'artistically touched' ('artistement touche ).'°2 Appreciation for loose brushwork is also apparent from the sheer variety of terms used to indicate bold and resolute brushwork. Abraham Bosse, 01 example, uses no less than four different terms: artistically touched, sketchy, forceful and prou (artiste, croque, seve/r, and fier).10* . - ^_ Together with the design of a picture, another difficult aspect of painting lay » plication of accents after the main parts had been painted. One statement of this opinion ^ in a passage from a 1621 French book on eloquence, outlining the knowledge "^^fj^ji anJ eloquently about art: 'The profile, the gestures, the symmetries and proportions, ^ expressions are those which give sound to the brush and are the principle elements 1 enterprise. The inside is easy to make, but the profile, the last touches and the voluI™j ^ jjg jects are difficult.'104 Abraham Bosse similarly stresses how the contours and and to are often hard to execute: 'a large part of that which makes an element appear in^ tffr* move away from the viewer and seem to disappear, as well as the contours are to do well.'105 104 I III- EYE OF TIIK CONNOISSEUR BY Wl HAN I) It sccns logical that master painters m , I and that thcv would finish and rcto.w-h . • , CXecute **ch difficult cini and Do Bie Slnglcd out when accents am, final one can expect to see the masters resolute handn ' f ,' ^ "is m *~ — wh« art theonst Arnold Houbraken, Frans Hals evelhad Lh> n^"* » ** ^ ^ recognizable features of the master' ('het kennelvke v,„ A K 'hesc final ,ouches '*e In fact, the vocabulary of early modern connois, mCCMel0-" cerning masterly elements in a paintinir as in ">nn°'Sscurs fems mostly geared towards dis-mr* lets the reader in on 1^ Chambray They even invented a specific Jargon, which they reinforce dramatically wtth gestures and empathic expressions m order to make others admire The Freshness and Lovely ness of the Colouring, the Freedom of the brush, the bold Touches, the Colours thickly impasted and well nourished, the separation of the Masses, the Draperies well cast, the rare Folds, the Masterful Strokes, the Grand Manner, the Muscles strongly felt'the beautiful Contours, the beautiful Tints, and the Softness of the Flesh tones, the beautiful Groups, the beautiful Passages, and a great many other chimerics of this kind.10" Flesh tones, mentioned by De Chambray in connection with 'softness', were also considered hard to paint. In France, there was even a specific expression for the depiction of flesh tones, as Jesuit scholar Etienne Binet (1569-1639) explained in 1621. He writes: 'The painter has a good touch, that is to say, he is good at depicting bare skin, that is to say, of the face, of the hands and of the feet, for the rest is clothed.'"0 Not surprisingly, perhaps, in seventeenth-century portraits, the face and hands (areas of exposed flesh) were commonly painted by the master himself, while pupils and assistants occasionally helped with the secondary elements, such as the clothing and the background."1 BEYOND THE PARADOX ^u;n ii-p relifivelvscarce and there Although primary sources on sevcntceuth-centurystudlo practices is no reason to assume, given the considerable variation am™S ^ on me most telling and styles, that all seventeenth-century connoisseurs wo^ coherent enough to allow the for-elements for attributing pictures, the surviving sources ^^^^ studio practice made mulation of a hypothesis. I suspect that an awareness1 ^ ^ ^ ^ on the main knowledgeable connoisseurs focus all the more on mas ^^.^ sections {byWrk) and elements and the difficult and resolute brushwork ^ ^ gs were not necesSar- subordinate passages - Moreover, I suspect that the rcah ^ ^ to assess ily entirely autograph (that is: done by the ^J^^uon. The master s characters a painting's overall quality when casting ju gmt 105 1429 1713 in his ii \ n n TUF. RYE 0PT(lp bnishwork in key passages gave an important clue, but it was at least as imoor»**i it the painting was - in the end - good enough to carry the master's name. As we h picture was worthy of carrying the master's name if it was made under his supervision m ^3 sufficiently high quality to pass muster. Among the many sources that underscore this f is the largest seventeenth-century controversy over attributions, the Uylenburgh case reaS°nin* As discussed in chapter 2, the Amsterdam dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh had sold th' master paintings to the elector of Brandenburg. Uylenburgh believed the works to be^661-0^ by Michelangelo, Holbein, Titian, Palma il Giovane and other renowned masters- how the paintings arrived in Berlin, the elector's court painter Hendrick Fromantiou dismissed twel of them as copies. Subsequently, the paintings were returned to the Netherlands and toured th country while both Uylenburgh and Fromantiou collected expert opinions on their status When asked whether the contested pictures were indeed done by the master under whose name they were sold, most painters and connoisseurs did not answer the question directly Instead, they would say whether they thought the pictures good enough to be sold under the various masters' own names. For example, Philips Koninck (1619-88) declared that the pictures were good and competently painted, .. .worthy of the masters under whose names they were sold, and that impartial painters and connoisseurs of Italian art could not but regard and accept them as such'.11' Dirck Santvoort (1610/11-1680) and Anthonie de Grebber (1621/22-1683) too were among those who judged the pictures worthy of hanging in a cabinet of Italian pictures.'14 On the other hand, the heads of the painters' guild in The Hague considered the quality of the pictures not worthy of attribution 'to any good master, let alone such outstanding masters as those to whom they were ascribed'."5 Similarly, a number of Antwerp specialists believed the works were unsuitable for sale as works by masters of that calibre'."6 Comparable comments can be found in other legal statements. For example, in 1650 a picture in the manner of the still-life painter Jan Jansz. den Uyl (1595/96-1639) was judged not beautiful enough' ('niet fray genoech') to be by the master."7 A painting in the manner ot PorceOis was judged by four painters, including Jacob van Ruisdael and Allart van Everdingen (1621-75;» be 'not worthy' ('niet waerdich') to be sold as a Porcellis."8 ^ When quality assessments are stated in such general terms, this may be due to 1 sibility that the specialists involved did not have sufficient knowledge of the painters ma produce a more specific judgment. In the Uylenburgh case, which concerned Italian P80^^^ would have been understandable."" But that in itself is of considerable interest. It it was^ ^ ^ practice to credit opinions of painting specialists who were not necessarily familiar cific manners of the painters under whose name contested works had been sold, t en ^ _^ ^ to a given hand was less important in arriving at a valuation than quality. This is so ^ ^ sion one gets from the high-end market for paintings in the second half ot the f**^ interest tury. High prices were paid for unattributed as well as attributed paintings. The mcre^erveJ fr< in painters' names did not mean that the highest end of the market was exclusive > attributed works.120 106 THE EYE OF THE CONNOISSEU Appreciation of quality regardless of a painte I Constant!),, Huygcns Jr in which he ' A N f) n;meisa,so evident in a diary entry by winch he saw in Berlin in l68o. One of the ZZZ^f** ^ ^ oflZ^Z portrait of a woman by the master who made the two fi n°teWOrthv he bribed as «a good van OmmerenV" Huygens seems to have committed to \ ^ the collecti™ of Mr. he found interesting even without knowing the ante's nam^ Characteristics of Pointings COLLABORATIONS Although seventeenth-century connoisseurs were somrt-i™ kl » -within a certain painting, thcy'did not ^Z^^'^^™ ,,dual hand, depended in part on the type ^ ^^^^^ was gre ter when two Jflerent masters collaborated on a painting than whe'n anonymous sm assistants executed portions of a work by a well-known master. In art-theoretical treatises we find paintings mentioned as by a certain master that were certainly not done solely by this painter. The famous Portrait of Pope Leo Xwith Two Cardinals (fig. 34), painted by Raphael with the aid of Giulio Romano, is a case in point. Giulio plays a key role in Giorgio Vasari's version of the story: he is fooled by a copy of the portrait, thinking mistakenly that he recognized his own brushwork. (It has never been determined which part of the portrait is by Giulio.) Van Mander repeats most of Vasari's account, yet fails to mention the input of Giulio Romano. To Van Mander, Giulio's involvement was not worth mentioning; he treats the portrait simply as a 'Raphael'. Van Mander's reasoning becomes explicit in his discussion of Holbein's painting of Henry VIIIs Barber Surgeons (fig. 48). There are some', he writes, 'who believe that this work was not finished altogether by Holbeen himself but that after his death someone else added that which was still wanting; but if that were so then whoever finished it knew how to follow Holbeen's working method ['handelinghe'] so perceptively ['verstandigh'] that no painter nor anyone with knowledge of art would distinguish different hands.'123 The Holbein story, which is recounted by Joachim von Sandrart (1606-88) as well,- is significant for several reasons. It is often stated that connoisseurship developed at a time when the practice of art collecting became more widespread and the art market flourished. And while -j* o.irsplves that attributions and judgments ot this was certainly the case, it is important to Holbein's picture in rhe Hall quality were not necessarily made in the context rftbeart^ri£-M P of the Barber Surgeons' Guild was obviously not £ prestigious work was not a prelude to giving the work a price tag. 1 ne au was an end in itself, an interesting topic for inteUecwal e tfe^ ^ ^ ^ Van Mander's conclusion is revealing. Even 1 t e p ^ Mded me brush in this or he writes, as long as it is well done it does not mAttcrt°c^ ^ me same way."5 Unfortunately, that passage. He is sure that other painters and art exPe^ndon [n l666 and afterwards treated the Holbein was severely damaged by the Great b ire o 107 Fig. 48 Hans Holbein, Henry VIII's Barber Surgeons (begun 1541-43)' Panel> l8o3 * 3"-4 Hall of the Barber-Surgeons Guild, London to a very heavy restoration. As a result, we cannot really judge its brushwork. Our certainty that the picture was indeed finished after Holbein's death in 1543, as Van Mander believed, is based on documentary information: the two men depicted in the top row on the right, X. Salmon and Tully, are known to have become wardens of the guild only after Holbein had passed away The people who in Van Mander's time stated that Henry VIII s Barber Surgeons was finished after Holbein's death were thus right. As I see it, it is significant that the early sevente not being suptf' ntury debate focused on work performed on the painting by artists who were notbe^^ sed by the master. Had it been completed under Holbein's supervision, I very much ou there would have been any discussion at all.127 . , wouij The fact that this work was completed after Holbein's death, Van Mander writes not in itself have disturbed anyone knowledgeable about the arts. A similar view ^ in in Giulio Mancini's Considerazioni. When discussing quality in art, Mancini cites tt* - uld — —--------------01 j the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican Palace as prime examples of exquisite However, it was common knowledge - Vasari deals with the incident at length in * ^ Va«;iriS »Cd lt him --—"»»•••iiuiu. TT 11U.L 11V. IVlltW Ulli IHM llUIIViv. f--- work done after Raphael's designs by his own assistants simply a 'Raphael'. this room was not completed until after Raphael's death.'24 Mancini knew Vas^ ^e ^ecu"011 well; he even wrote a concise commentary on it. He must have been well aware of e^ fl.n(r, history of the Sala di Costantino. What he knew did not however prevent him &•« 108 ,Ht 1Y1 01 niv CONNOISSEUR Y "IS HANI) These remarks do not mean that seventeenth cent ciple to the identification of studio input in a paintine Th^ ^Tu °PP°Sed ln f,rin were called in to decide whether a picture was worthy!of c Irr CXpms respective share of master and pupil in a work wis f toT^lt ****** name Of when the also be considered worthy of mention if a certain nuniM Z ^"T* its vahlc" h might painting by his master. For example, in a discussi " ^Tl * dement in a K), Van Mander somewhlu c J^^lKS [ ^ ^ k decked out; the innermost layers of clothing « ! ,1 " T and , j .... rt. T; , w™in« Purple and these were done by Jacob Riuwert who hved with him [Van Heemskerck] at the time, as 1 have heard h,m say> ^h gh curious contribution by an assistant could thus be noteworthy, in general seventeenth-century connoisseurs did not seem particularly interested in identifying studio input The remarkable absence of descriptions of such collaborations in inventories, notarial documents, art theoretical treatises and personal writings suggests that connoisseurs indeed examined subordinate passages negligently or offhandedly, as Junius and Hoogstraten advised. Distinguishing the hands of two different masters in one painting was a different story. This pursuit already intrigued connoisseurs in the early seventeenth century. Especially in the Southern Netherlands, where specialist collaborations were widespread, interest in the practice seems to have been considerable. For example, in Antwerp, roughly one percent of the attributions recorded in inventories between 1611 and 1650 concerned attributed collaborations, in a sample researched by Elizabeth Honig.'32 In the north, collaborations between two masters also occurred, especially in landscape and architectural paintings in which the figures were sometimes added by another master.'" However, in the north opinion seems to have been divided on the artistic merits of these collaborations. For example, Willem Goeree warned his readers in 1670 that it was better to paint figures oneself than to have them added by another master. Even if the other master painted better figures, the painting as a whole would not necessarily be improved, according to Goeree, since additional figures usually did not agree with the bonding in a painting - the subtle use of color, shadows and light to create a sense of pictorial depth.- The painter and art theorist Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) actively disapproved of such collaborations, unless the second painter behaved like the first master's assistant. In his view the second master should imitate the first painter's characteristic brushwork {handeling) to such an extent that painting appeared to be done only by one hand.'- t A fascinating account of distinguishing between, * ^ ^ Netherlandish masters within a single picture is found in a lett y * Matthew (x577-,*55) to Sir Dudley Carleton on «™^J^2 hand of Snyders, Mat-Rubens in which Carleton and Matthew thought they had recognized thew wrote: h nvide by Snyders, that other famous Concerning the causinge of anie part thereof to e ma ^ thought as y[o]u dec Painter, Y[ou]r L[ordshi]p and I have been In an errou , 109 IHK FY F. Ol m iiis HAND ,,K ('ONNois<,p, that his hand h.ul been in that I, hut sincerely and Imainly it is not ft* For ln r|l|s Peece tin- hosts lit ..II alive, and in act of cythcr escape or resistance, in the exPr,.ssj„n h hereof Snyder doth infinitlic come short of Rubens, and Rubens saith that he should take it in ill part, if I should compare Snyders with him in that point. The talent of Snyders, is to represent beasts hut especiallie Birds altogether dead, and wholly w[j] thout Mlie action . II'- 1.ess than a year later, however, Rubens seemed to contradict himself when he informed C I that the eagle in his picture of Prometheus was done by Snyders (fig. 49).n7 Yh\s paintin ^ ^ part of the collection of works Carleton exchanged with Rubens."8 The eagle here is ^ not represented 'without anie action'. On the contrary, it looks very dynamic. To reconcile th"^ contradictory accounts, one could say, as Peter Sutton has done, that the eagle must have b * designed by Rubens and subsequently executed by Snyders.'''' This would explain the • /v 1 tuc energy jp the eagle, in contrast to the stiffer and less dynamic animals of Snyders. In fact, this kind f F'g- 49 Peter Paul Rub ens and Frans Snyders, Prometheus, c. 1611-12, completed by 1618, canvas, * ** Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia em- tio nil I N I or I HI v ONNOIS s k. u n MV "IS MAN!) tf the relative merits and characteristics of * ffffMN ^ would deliKht a scventeenth-cc.uur":::;::^ "r 2* * ^ r l,kc ^arleton. Like present-day experts, seventeenth-century painters an 1 ing names to pictures. However, their ways of labeling J 1 COn^«W were keen on attach -attribution practices. Master painters could claim n t " t red somewhat from current as 'by their hand' which they had not literally painted "™™u ! 7" ^ *"ribc w"rh the term original' {principael or *rwW) did not mean rh t * " RubenS did- Morcowr-alone. They did distinguish works worthy of curving r " ^ ^ by the master mously as by a pupil {leerling or discipet) and/or works thev'LT' T though if done well such works could be conXd nZ • f ,( a u. , , considered paintings by the master. Input from a naid assistant (geset)would have presumably counted as by the master if done in the IS£ Furthermore, it seems likely that many master painters made distinctions between various leve s of quality in works that counted as by their hand. Some even seem to have indicated quality differences with their signatures. In this, Netherlandish painters may have been emulating Apelles and other ancient painters. For example, when Gerrit van Honthorst added fecit (has made) to his signature this seems to indicate the highest level of quality. In studios, the highest quality presumably was achieved in works with maximum involvement by the master himself. These pictures could be autograph, though, as we know from Rubens's correspondence, this was not necessarily the case. The main categories of thought brought to bear on these issues in the seventeenth century - the distinction between originals and copies, and that between pieces by the master, works by pupils and retouched works - do not support the supposition that connoisseurs and collectors had a special interest in purely autograph pictures. Nonetheless, such works were (occasionally) made and documented as such; four buyers asked a painter or dealer tor a written guarantee to this effect. Early modern art theorists also suggest that seventeenth-century connoisseurs were keen on recognizing the master's touch. However, they do not seem to have been particularly preoccupied with deciding whether or not a picture was entirely autograph. Several seventeenth-cenrun art theorists recommended to their readers that they look for the distinctively indmdual brush-work of a masters hallmark style. At first glance, this seems to imply that attribution practices were at odds with studio the paradox of seventeenth-century connoisseurship. However^ > ^ ^ ^ century attribution practices (insofar as these can be reconsr ^ Franciscus Junius texts on the topic) do not seem to have conflicted with stu ^^^^ ojj fhe key elements in and Samuel van Hoogstraten emphasize the imPorta^ ° ^ Van Hoogstraten explained a painting while looking at secondary passages more o aan • ^ assistants execute the bis advice by adding that great masters commonly bid -V oflooking wus quite common secondary elements. My hypothesis is that this hierarc I 7 Qn connoisseurship among connoisseurs. The practice is in line with the emp^ ^ ^ tQ studio input Put on masterly passages and the absence of primary so hi in His HAND mi pu Nffft w.Mthy of carrying I master's name. Although an occasional art buyer may havc ^ I preference for purely autograph pictures, this docs not seem to have been a very wide ^ concern; If W« m to believe Karel van Mandcr and Samuel van Hoogstraten, knowledgeable lovers were not troubled if I painting contained contributions by other hands as long as they ^ J,Mic well and were limited to secondary elements. By way of contrast, i nnnoissenrs seem to ha^ been more interested in recognizing different hands if both were good masters collaborating 0n ? single composition. (To my mind, this was a natural outcome of the focus on masterly elements As to present-day connoisseurship, do seventeenth-century categories of thought (in$ofe» as thev can be reconstructed on the basis of the sources I studied) call for thorough revisions gf the oeuvre catalogues of seventeenth-century painters? Possibly, yes. The seventeenth-century sources studied here raise three important questions that deserve further study, as difficult as they may prove to answer in individual cases. The need to rewrite existing oeuvre catalogues depends on the outcome of these questions. Firstly, to what extent did seventeenth-century painters such as Van Honthorst and Rembrandt consciously produce works of various levels of quality' Secondly, the relatively modest amount of evidence suggesting that painters created purely autograph pictures calls for caution when attributing paintings entirely to the hand of a master or entirely to the hands of his pupils and assistants. A proper understanding of this issue requires us to study each individual studio in order to determine as well as possible the extent to which the master was accustomed to put his hand to studio products. Thirdly, if the point of departure for attributions to a specific master is no longer a group of works considered to be entirely autograph, but rather the key characteristics in documented or firmly attributed works, such as the design and the execution of the main areas and accents, does this lead to a different understanding of the masters hallmark style and the contours of his oeuvre? The insights gained in answering these questions may well weaken the assumptions on which most oeuvre catalogues are based and thereby give cause to revise them. 112 EPILOGUE A Disputed Rembrandt In his famous mtroductmn to art history, The Story of Art, Ernst Gombrich used the painting fR I t S42) Z thlHermit^ M— » St. Petersburg to elucidate the «2 of Rembrandt s art (fig. I5:). Rembrandt, wrote Gombrich, was the greatest painter of Holland and one of the greatest painters who had ever lived. He was exceptional in that he needed hardly any gestures or movements to express the inner meaning of a scene. He was never theatrical. Gombrich illustrated his point with the painting of the reconciliation, after a long estrangement, between King David and his rebellious son Absalom, a story from the Old Testament. According to Gombrich, the picture also gave insight into the master's working method, and he observed: When Rembrandt was reading the Old Testament, and tried to see the kings and patriarchs of the holy land in his mind's eye, he thought of the Orientals he had seen in the busy port of Amsterdam. That is why he dressed David like an Indian or Turk with a big turban, and gave Absalom a curved oriental sword. His painter's eye was attracted by the splendour of these costumes, and by the chance they gave him of showing the play of light on the precious fabric, and the sparkle of gold and jewellery. We can see that Rembrandt was as great a master in conjuring up the effect of these shiny textures as Rubens or Velazquez. Rembrandt used less bright colour than either of them. The first impression of many of his paintings is that of a rather dark brown. But these dark tones give even more power and force to the contrast of a few bright and brilliant colours. The result is that the light on some of Rembrandt's pictures bob almost Rembrandt never used these magic effects of light and shade for then own sake. The Jway -rved to enhance the drama of the scene. What could be more movmg than young prince in his proud array, burying his face on his father s breast, or 8 fee, and sorrowful acceptance of his son's submission? Though we do not see Absaloms Wnat he must feel.' 237 A DISPUTED REMBRANDT THE EYE OF THE CONNoissf- (| Hnbrictt interpretation was first published in 1950, and the passage has remained unchanged , the many subsequent editions of this popular survey, including the paperback edition of 2006 -However the reputation of the painting suffered a heavy blow when the members of the Rern. brandt Research Project (RRP) published their opinion about the work in 1989.' In vol. Ill of their oeuvre catalogue A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, they criticized a number of features of the picture that did not match the character and quality they expected of an autograph Rembrandt. The brushwork seemed 'superficial' in certain areas, especially the thick accents in the pink cloak, which did not follow the shape of the folds and therefore did not help to define its form or the shape of the figure's upper body underneath the cloak. The spatial construction was sometimes weak, they wrote, particularly to the left of the figures, where a scarcely recognizable stone and vague trees formed an unhappy transition between the foreground and the view of a distant city. Moreover, certain colors struck them as unusual; the combination of thick pale green and pale pink paint in the protagonists attire was in their opinion 'almost inconceivable for Rembrandt'. They therefore concluded that this painting was not by Rembrandt and put it in their C-category of rejected works. The attribution of the painting had never been questioned before the appearance of vol. Ill of the Corpus. The RRP accounted for this by pointing at the resemblance between the painting in the Hermitage and certain undisputed Rembrandts.The composition, with the brightly lit men in the foreground silhouetted against a brown-gray background with a distant city, gave the picture an unmistakable grandeur. The compact grouping' of the two men was certainly one of the positive features of this painting', and 'the colour-scheme with its striking contrast between light, broken tints in the figures and the surrounding greys and browns' gave the painting 'a pronounced individual character'. Moreover, a certain resemblance can be detected between the Hermitage painting and Rembrandt's famous Night Watch (fig. 152). Willem van Ruytenburch is also dressed in a light color and is contrasted similarly against a darker background (though the RRP maintained that the treatment of the clothing was weaker in the Hermitage painting). Both the Night Watch and the Hermitage painting are signed and dated to the year 1642, and although the RRP questioned the authenticity of the signature on the painting in the Hermitage, they believed that the date was plausible. Their hypothesis was that the painting was created by a pupil m Rembrandt's studio, possibly Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), who signed it with the master's name. However, an attribution to Bol was rendered unlikely by the quality of the more successful brush" arcW treatment °f the °lder man's and the sparse indication of the background of th si kSeemednt0 CXCeed Bol'S -Pities, leading the RRP to conclude that the attribunon this work was still 'something of a puzzle'/ ^t by the tZCPTY b,CtWCen the Brandt Research Project's conviction that the work questions unde^ u ^ hiSh **** *f the painting raises several patf£ standing. Had Gombn\e ,mp°rtance °*" attribution issues for a broader art-historical un h*d not even invented^TfT^ ^ CSSCnCC °f Remb™dt's art in a painting that the m and did this indicate ■ J mCmbers of the Rembrandt Research Project been mi-. shortcoming in their methods or assumptions? Would Gom*** 238 4 Fig. 152 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburcb., known as The Night Watch, 1642, canvas, 363 x 437 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam thought so, and was this why he had not changed the passage in his revised edition ot 199? Or had the opinion of the Rembrandt Research Project escaped his attention? (To this day no one seems to have noticed the contradiction between the views ot Gombnch and the K . . The provenance of the painting makes the -Picture can be traced back with virtual certainty to the wealth} An, pa wy ^ der Hem (162,-78), a contemporary of Rembrandt with a ~Jj^j RulKns, Pice, * Paintings. Surviving documents indicate that he owned pa^°ngsy ^ ^ ^ ^ .in,(1„u Grebber, Gabriel Metsu, Maria van Oosterwijk, Gerard de aire^^ by his jaughtcr A.na-°thers.'Twenty paintings from Laurens van der Hems cj>nca.o, ^ 4 *aon ,9 April .713. The sales catalogue mention, the Mt |onut|u„, van tomU«* y David and Jonathan, by Rembrant' («Een ontmoetmg van u. biWical wbjeel than '< was thus identified as a painting by Rembrandt with a so aw \ pi S|MJ1 i D W m»RAN1V riii. i I Divul's nirting from Jonathan, the son of King Saul, epi „d Gomfcfch suggested, name \ « „ .fc Thjs intcrprct;lt,(,n implies that DtVfd .s the figure i, tlut ^ pl.ur much earlier ml- * - ^ Gomhrich As thc Bnnk ,)f Samuel r,||s in eac pie in David's life ,,U PUlk If -J1 in ulvin 'n"cnxZmerfriends, and Jonathan had given Dav.d some of his ^ -^**-*^^^:^ , ,„,,, envious as he was of David's greater popularity among his people, Jonathan warned Ld and thus saved his life Before David P^£™«£™*™ °."C J? T« the stone , jr/ u 1 outside Jerusalem, where David had been hiding. The Bible describes how They kissed h other, and cried together, however David cried more' (i Samuel: 20:41). As early as 1925, Klaus Graf von Baudissin (1891-1961) proposed that the painting de-ted this episode/ The only clement he could not explain was David's rich attire, which was not common in earlier depictions of the theme (fig. 153)." It made David resemble a prince. In 1956 Vladimir Levinson-Lessing (1893-1972) discovered the passage in the Bible that explains David's rich attire as a gift from Jonathan. Moreover, he presented solid documentary evidence in support of Baudissin's hypothesis, including the early description quoted above."5 Since then, the identification of this scene as David's parting from Jonathan has been accepted by most Rembrandt specialists, among them Jan van Gelder, Christian Tumpel, and the Rembrandt Research Project." Levinson-Lessing's documentary evidence was indeed compelling. At the 1713 sale the painting was bought for 105 guilders by Jan van Beuningen (1667-1720), who subsequently sold it, with the same attribution and title, to Osip Solovyov, an agent of Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725).12 The transaction took place on 13 May 1716, and the painting's price was fixed at 80 guilders. The picture was then shipped to Russia, where Peter the Great hung it in his favorite summer residence, the Monplaisir pavilion at Peterhof. In 1883 the painting was moved to the Hermitage, where it can still be seen today. The painting's provenance is exceptional in that it has no gap at all, which adds weight to the early records. Moreover, the two earliest known owners of the painting, Van der Hem and Van Beuningen, were well-reputed collectors. Laurens van der Hem was fifteen years younger than Rembrandt and lived in the same city. Van der Hem and Rembrandt's shared interest in the visual arts makes it likely that they knew each other personally; a concrete connection between them is that Van der Hem acquired drawings by Roelandt Savery (1576-1639) that had previously been owned by Rembrandt.^ Rembrandt and Van der Hem had several acquaintances in common, among them the painter and collector Lambert Doomer (1624-1700), Pieter Blaeu (r637" 1706 the son of Johannes Blaeu [1596-1673!, the famous map maker), and Prince Cosimo III de edict (1642-1723), grand duke Gf Tuscany. The latter noted in his travel journal that he visited the famous painter' Rembrandt (' 1 ""sid- Rembrandt attributions., ' " Ptrtfcykf< oftw, ,,,,1 probl.,,,.,,.. In contrast, lome of the paintings key dementi r I 11 resolute and suggestive definition of [onath in\ t, , j' ' attenti(,n * ■& The thors consider a potential attribution ot the oaintin *v. ,,,r,""""'l "» pawing, when the au-would in their opinion argue against itl^^^ * f?" *f* - «* ^ rendering of the citv ofjen^alern, winch, though 7" i T * seems an important part ot the scene. " Joni,rh*n' face< nonetheless the autr^j issrs,n qua,,ty betweev,ne part °f the ^ **—* tb authors perceive, It is all the more surpnsmg that they do not consider the possibility of col.aboi at.on. The emphasis placed in the Corpus on relatively poor passages and the little In nori given to well-executed parts disturbs the balance of the entry and makes one wonder if the authors overemphasized their objections to counter their own doubts about the de-attribution Moreover, it seems inconsistent that the authors consider the possibility that Rembrandt himself described this very painting in a document dated 1659 after having rejected the painting on the basis of its style and quality. In that year, Rembrandt promised the art dealer Lodewijk van Ludick (1629-c. 1697) to 'finish and deliver a small painting representing the story of Jonathan and David that he is already working on, and this about a year from this date'." Although there is every reason to assume that this is the painting in the Hermitage (no other painting is known that matches this description), the RRP denies that this can be the case since they find in the painting no trace of Rembrandt's characteristic brushwork of circa 1660 or clear indications of a later reworking.20 But if the brushwork had already convinced the RRP that Rembrandt could not have been the author of the painting, why continue to examine it for contrasts in style and possible later additions? Again, no mention is made of the possibility that more than one painter could have executed the work. The composition of the painting is hardly taken into consideration in the Rembrandt Research Project's analysis. The authors sparingly praise the grandeur of the composition and the 'compact grouping' of the two protagonists but do not further elaborate on the invention or its quality. They do not seem aware of the opinion of Rembrandt's younger contemporary Roger de Piles that in matters of attribution one should consider not only the character ot the hand but also, and more importantly, the character of the artist's <^^^AC^ of Seventeenth-Century Connoisseurship'). In the case of^/^>F^ 7 . . 1 The contrast between David s rich attire ana invention constitutes one of it. mam strengths. The contas. imaginat.on and h.s fragile posture - his face suggestively turned away - £ the » ^ ™« ^ enhances the drama of the scene." This feature would, n lac • K ^ ({l.m.KHb-)> h.s to the master, since his ability to convey the pass.ons ot the»un j ^ ^ ^ lifelike expressions ('affectuum vivacitas) and true-to 1 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ (hc mm ebrated by his contemporaries as his main strengths (see c J> • ; • rj,c „.mic.vcUtc himself indicated in ,639 that he sough. » convey 'the most natural (e). 24} iiiiiNidi i in Ivw|K h,clu kN)0 in Ins panwing. Th. -,,11 format and eompac t grouping In ft, I lcrmi^. " ' w,„ ,,,,„ , [uygens-S remark that Rembflftdt, bemg totally absorbed in what he is 'loini, Lfo . to concentrate | Ins workl in a smaller picture and to bring about through com, ncss an effect that one may seek in vain in the largest pa.nt.ngs by the other [UtVWltf- |0 ,1hsc consulcrations, we can add that the innovative depiction of David in royal gar. ments reflects an intewit tn the story's 'evgentliekhcyt' ('lifclikencss'), the quality so highly celebrated by Philips Angd in 1*4*. As we have seen, Angel praised Rembrandt in particular f„r infusing his biblical scenes with convincingly naturalistic details, which resulted from his cm f„| reading of the Bible and the master's subsequent 'high and deep thoughts' ('hooge en verre na-ghed.Khten').Thc term 'qQmtHdt meant 'real' in the sense of convincingly natural and befitting the character of what was depicted. In order to tmike a scene look 'real' in this sense, it was nor necessary for the painter to follow a textual source literally. Instead, it was looked upon favorably when artists read more than one account of the same story and used their own inventiveness, so as best to represent the heart of the story.2' In the Hermitage painting, David's rich attire indicates that the artist had carefully read the Bible before he conceived this scene and that he used the passage about the royal garments that lonathan had given David to improve upon the traditional depiction of the story. Since David fled from the court with no intention of returning, it seems likely he would take with him some of his most precious garments, which would, moreover, remind him of his loyal friend Jonathan. Besides, this attire gave the artist the opportunity to create the dramatic contrast discussed above. The invention and composition of this painting thus reflects Rembrandt's main qualities to a much greater extent than the Rembrandt Research Project's brief remarks suggested. Indeed, seventeenth-century views on quality and terms such as 'eygentlickheyt' may help explain why Van der Hem and Van Beuningen considered this painting worthy of carrying Rembrandt s name. Furthermore, seventeenth-century views on style can help to interpret the painting's execution. The Rembrandt Research Project's analysis of the Hermitage painting reveals several ot their underlying assumptions about Rembrandt's stylistic development. According to the authors, the 'pastel-like' colors of David's and Jonathan's garments were 'almost unthinkable' tor Rembrandt, especially since these colors have similar tonal values. The RRP evidently expected a certain coherence in Rembrandt's choice of colors and believed that he would not juxtapose colors of a similar tonal value. Furthermore, the combination of the terms 'pastel-like' and unthinkable suggests that they found light pink and light green inappropriate for these dignified persona^ However, in the seventeenth century such colors were quite common for men's clothing. See. example, Willem van Ruytenburch's light yellow costume in the Night Watch and the light pin attire of Andnes Stilte in a portrait by Johannes Verspronck (fig. 154).- And if these seventeen century dignitaries dressed in such colors, why would these tints be unthinkable' for cosrumes of Old Testament heroes? Also, is it logical to presume that Rembrandt would ha a more narrow range of colors than an assistant in his workshop? 244 1111 IYI OF THE CONNOISSEUR A I) I SIM i > REMBRANDT In nw view. *m assumptions indicate that the authors thought oftdbl, and tones more as entities ,n tun own right than as a means to Cftl , d«feed ,»,, , Thev „, ] Rembrandt had an aesthet.c preterm, fof juttf*** cetteta Colon and tone, Ilot unlikc , twentieth-centun artist I Uvever, as Comtek h obfffttd, Uembrandt used the effects oMi.ht and shade consistently to enhtnct the dram., ot I went. Moreover, he used colors and ton ,1 contrasts to create I Convincing suggestion of three-dimrns.onaliry {jkmding), as Ernst yan de Wetering has demonstrated. Many a seventeenth-century art expert emphasized tins point, as we have seen in chapter 6. Among them was Joachim von Sandrart, who had familiarized himself with Rembrandt's work when he stayed in Amsterdam in the 1640s. Sandrart pra.sr.l Rembrandt in particular for the houding ('Hauding') in his works, that is, 'the mixing, breaking and reducing the rawness of colors until everything in the painting comes close to nature', and for the power* which resulted from his use of color, light and shade.25 As a general rule, bright and pure colors (especially yellow and red) tend to come forward, as do sharp tonal contrasts. These factors had to be considered by an artist who was out to create F,g. ,54 Johannes Verspronck, ,Wn« SHIte as aSja* dard Bearer, 1640, canvas, 104 x 78.5 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington 245 \ 1 MSIM* rtO RF.MBRANDT NIF. F.Y F. Ol I III ( ONNOISSRI/H , evincing illusion of space. The use in the Hermitage painting of light, broken colors of tonal value tor the garments of both figures places equal emphasis on each protagonist, who are indeed of equal importance in the story. Moreover, the color of the two figures creates a sense oi unity bonding them in a single compact group that contrasts powerfully with the surrounding darkness. From a seventeenth-century point of view, the use of color, light and shade in this painting must have thus appeared successful, since the artist not only convincingly placed the figures in the pictorial space but also appropriately highlighted the scenes key figures. Like the general design, this aspect links the painting to the very essence of Rembrandt's art. In fact, Rembrandt had used a similar juxtaposition of broken light colors in a painting he completed in 1638 The Wedding Feast of Samson, in which he gave both key figures, Samson and his bride, pale blue outfits (fig. 155). Another seventeenth-century art critical term that could explain the thick accents in David's pink cloak is kennelijckheyt, or surface structure (chapter 6). As Ernst van de Wetering has demonstrated, Rembrandt used thick uneven accents to make highlights seem to protrude forwards. His pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten explained that such uneven blotches of paint were Fi& 155 Rembrandt van Rijn The w Staatliche Kunstsammk,Zr7c ^7? '638, C™™' ^ * '75 imiungtn, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden 246 I,krb it. h ligh t in a 11 litri con 1.1 inn' imsrv. it an ohiect town to n. ofh paint to their pi naea to appear tar away, it was important trj h rVt surtacc.) In one of the very tow letters In Rembrandt thai have come d rotors to this parncula, effect In t639 he Knt a largo painting a, g* to hi. intermediary ,t the court, C onstantyn Huygens, and added: 'Dear Sir, Hang this paintnig „, , ,,,„„ „„, .„ that one can soo it from afar, then it will sparkle beat." (louJd the thick accentl ,„ I W clotl have boon smnlarlv intended to catch light and emphasi* the in.nn ,.............. „„, ,, .,, Bruvn and Simon 1 evie of the Rembrandt Ream h Inject ittf bm k tar enough to ,lf,pn..... such an effect? Or are these brushstrokes indeed meffe, ,IV, „„1 „„„1; 'decorative', as Bn.vn and Levie stated? A last assumption about Rembrandt's stylistic development was already briefly mentioned above. When the authors discussed the possibility that this painting was the very one Rembrandt promised to finish in 1659, they argued that this could not be so, since the painting doc. nor .how Rembrandt's characteristic brushwork of about i66o.They thus assumed that if Rembrandt had finished this painting around 1659, he would have done so in his style of that time rather than painting in his style of the early 1640s. This assumption implies that a painter's style develops steadily and inescapably over time. It intimates that a style overcomes an artist rather than being something he manipulates at will. As we have seen in chapter 4, several seventeenth-century experts believed that some characteristic features of style could not be learned or taught, but resulted from an artists individual nature. However, they were not unaware of the myriad ways in which painters manipulated and adjusted their styles. A variety of sources show that seventeenth-century Netherlandish painters adjusted their manners of working to the painting's expected price, to the location of the art work, to the function and/or subject of the work, or to the style of a particular example they were trying to imitate or emulate. Moreover, they sometimes used different styles to displav their virtuosity. For example, around 1629 Rembrandt created an exquisite series ot three small paintings done in three distinct manners. He painted a virtuous old woman in a very refined style, depicted a soldier with extremely broad brushstrokes, and complemented the sor.es with an expressive self-portrait done in a third, fluent manner. He was thus certainlx capable rff this book, namely that knowledge ot seventeenth cen ,v u ; "yie, authenticity and artistic quality is indispensable in attribut.,.,,. I use bo* Parpen the criteria that experts use - either consciously or uncons, .ousl) « 'u ' label paintings from this period. 247 I p.SPlM.n RKMBRANDT THI IY1 Of tiik CONMOfifl T. . - u,lvt.s somc questions unanswered about the execution of the I Icrm.tage pairif D Z Ll. invent and p«nl the work, while passing over the less important parfs ^ 1 riv? Did he use a pupil or assistant for what he considered less important ^Xtvjting both invented and executed by an assistant who understood the ^Tof Rembrandt's art but was still modest enough to allow h- master to appropriate the 2 Or had Rembrandt perhaps left the work unfinished? (A curious characteristic of the " unting that hitherto has hardly been noticed- is that David s right boot has not been defined at the top- it transforms itself, as if it were, into the pants.) And if the painting was left unfinished, did Rembrandt later retouch the work himself? Or did someone else complete it? It is beyond the scope of the present book to provide answers to these questions. After this epilogue was written, I learned that Ernst van de Wetering, leader of the Rembrandt Research Project, had decided to re-attribute David and Jonathan to Rembrandt. He discusses the re-attribution briefly in Corpus V (2010, pp. 220-21), arguing that the poor transition from foreground to background in this painting is due to a narrative choice Rembrandt made, wanting to show both the two men embracing and the distant city of Jerusalem.2* The unfinished boot, the quality of the hands and the vague shapes in the middle ground (denoting either smoke or trees) are not discussed. Van de Wetering does, however, comment on the rough brushwork in David's cloak bv including this detail as an illustration when explaining the concept of'kennelijckheyt'.29 Rather than to give definitive answers about specific paintings, my goal has been to show how radically the insights upon which attributions are based have changed since the Van Meegeren scandal. I also wanted to explore the ways in which seventeenth-century views on style, authenticity and quality can help to further refine the questions and assumptions upon which experts - consciously or unconsciously - base their assessments when attributing paintings by Rembrandt and his contemporaries. One understanding to emerge from my inquiry is that a sharp distinction between autograph and non-autograph pictures cannot be taken for granted. In addition, many a seventeenth-century master painter consciously created paintings of different quality levels, and consciously manipulated his style to best suit a particular commission or function. And we have learned that connoisseurs had a 'hierarchical' way of looking: thev paid more attention to key elements, such as the figures and masterly touches of the brush, than to subsidiary passages. In short, a close analysis of seventeenth-century sources revealed that seventeenth- ry^painters and connoisseurs had nuanced ideas about issues of style and authenticity, ment TlTl" *mking-And onlythe assumptions of which we are aware are open to improve-particularTo T T '° ^ the connoisseurs discussed throughout this book, and * extensively abof T ^ Slm°n wh°Se entry on David and Jonathan I discussedI so d^d, the Remh? 1 »g had the COUraSe to convey their opinions in such great detail- & example. ProJect's °Penness in matters of attribution has set an admiral ?lt^?m^xJ^^( the hist°nc:al context in which seventeenth-cenrury Dutch and Prove our understanding ru™ ^ n0t ^ to Prevent mistaken assumptions but also to ■*> g °f the ^ Of paintings from that period. In the case of Rembrandt 248 Mil' IM OF >"» l'°NN()|ssiUR | THR PAINTI- H \ l I'sos I HR CONNOISSEUR? David and Jonathan, seventeenth centur) art critical terms provide i basis fortdmowiedgbii tft< high quality of the painting. Indirectly, these terms also add to our appreciation of the extraordi nan insights of Sir Ernst (rornbrich, who is rightly celebrated as one of the twentieth century's foremost ait historians. Without knowing these spec il'u terms, (iombrich assessed Rembrandt's painting very much like a seventeenth-century connoisseur might have done. Only in rare instances can historical context provide virtual certainty about thi status of a painting among seventeenth-century connoisseurs, as in the ease tHvHi, ^ ^ ^ ^ ErnmaiIS-gangers, naar m.jn oordeel etgenliik r' van de hoogstc wijding m nc ^ wat hier verhaalcl wordt. I [ft ondcrwern is m,.„ . 1 26 .rlisch «bcuren, wat h ■ See Unten J^^J^JÄ Knuijpncl/Van Wijnen r996, p. 7. and ,n Blankert 2006, p * , 13 ÄS !n .' * that the work was a fake, tho^ he did not share those doubts; F .unv, LcerniHg M*t, «« fa* «* P 79 and Al IK, box nc,. 25, ' • Mover I lendrik Luytwieler, declared in a newspaper mterv.ew ot July i945 that the work definite|v 14 j.ucd from me seventeenth century. See Van Dantzig t947, P- ^ Most other scholars dated Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus to Vermeer s m.ddle or late penod because of its colors; see Vlfl den Brandhof i979, p. 103. On Vermeer's early painting techn.ques, see Kolfin/Pottasch/ Hoppe 2002. 16 De Vries i939 (ed. 194«)- , 17 'Indien ik bij de schifting thans al te streng ben geweest, dan kan de les, die het geval van Mageren ons heeft geleerd, dit makkelijk verklaren', De Vries i939 (ed. 1948), p. 71. 18 See also Sheldon/Costaras 2006. 19 See Liedtke 2008. 20 Blankert 1975, pp. 108-10. 21 See Blankert 1975, reviewed by Christopher Brown in Brown 1977; and reviewed by Arthur Wheelock in Wheelock 1977. See also Wright 1976, p. 83. 22 Apart from the paintings mentioned above, a newly attributed painting has also been much contested: St. Praxedis. See Wheelock 1998a. The work is also reproduced in Wheelock 1995a. 23 'Het spreekt vanzelf, dat iedere toeschrijving door bewijzen moet worden gestaafd, voorzover men deze althans kan leveren op het doornige terrein van dergelijke conclusies.' De Vries 1939 (ed. 1948). P- T1-^ chapter is called 'On some wrong or doubtful attributions and a number of forgeries'. 24 Van den Brandhof 1976, p. 9. 25 On Cornells Hofstede de Groot's distrust of chemical evidence, see also in this chapter, 'Rembrandt re- search and the integration of scientific techniques'. , , 'In een vroegere polemiek tegen de Rembrandtvorschers heeft Prof. Martin met groote zelfbewusthei verklaard, dat hij door het bezit van stijlgevoel dingen opmerkte, die zijn tegenstanders moesten ontg-omdat zij dit stijlgevoel niet of althans in mindere mate dan hij hadden. Ik heb hem toen op "erdulde^f wijze er op gewezen, dat wat hij voor stijlgevoel hield, niets daarmede te maken had en ik moet 00k verklaren, dat het feit, dat de hooggeleerde heer in dit schilderij niet in iederen toets de hand van Fran. . herkent zonneklaar bewijst, dat hij 00k voor den stijl van Frans Hals niet het allergeringste gevoel Hofstede de GrootI925, pp. 28-29, 5,18-19. . *** cS\T' Pu 4u ffLAs L°peZ mentl°ns' a rumor tl™t Van Meeg, at the hei?ht of the controversy about the work in the ,«< cirr^°8, t 4L4 ff AS L°peZ mentions, a rumor that Van Meegeren had created the painting * S^^eS^ —rSy ab°Ut ^ W°rk - I92°S-t Friedlander r942 (ed. I946), p. I?3. ° ^e^n^I942(ed.I946)>pp./l63.7, Fy^ 1942 I946)' PP b< * 32 rnedlander 10.12 (eA n \ Tt is to L, '■eved and distill!! a r P' 1?y lntu,tive judgment may be regarded as a necessary evil. is;0„ly one «hS^ctaS 8 ^ h°WeVer as basis for a *££ P f 'The first impression i T ?°°n lt had Proved itself incapable of sustaining weight. * 33 Fnedlanden£Z l^p ^ °^ °f * ^ ^ 254 Till I > I Ol I1IK rONNOISSI NO'f y Giovanni Morelli published under th,. i t ».0**,r,,,dlideha:LtKsSE5 ;:;;;;,i,n(aH^................i 0 ***** ,s,, rM. then i„ , longer ew« on I V ^fttinf 1111"1'1'....."<' I..... in Ron . lion-.sso); and subsequently in a serie! 7tZ^lTZ^ s ■"*» ' ' Morelh .ScM. See also Gibson-Wood 1988. ' m°l,CH '89°"93, whu h appeared in Kr.K|, £ Note, tor example, this passage in the English translation a* 1VT MS' ^ . endeavour by an example to render my imi r ct "t, d^"'S *«« 'Let mc observed that, after the head, the hand is the ZtS^2 g'b,C T f h- Now most painters, and rightly enough, put all the st! £ ntoT'T P °f ^ J*™ which they endeavour to make as striking as possible, and p^Z^^J^T, ° ^ ^ ated ideas from their masters. This is rarely the ease in the rep £2o^ l^h 7 'f" also have a different form in every individual. The types of C u f yCt they usually common to a school, having been transmitted^^ ^.« tors; while, on the other hand every independent master hafhls 0^^^^^^ landscape and what « more of the form of the hand and ear. For every important painter has otosTj a type of hand and ear peculiar to himself Morelli 1893, vol. I, p 7 P ' 36 Morelli stated in the introduction to the second volume of mi Kumtkrithche Studien that the intuitive method ot his predecessor, Otto Mundler, which he valued highly, was more 'accidental'and less trustworthy than his scientific method. Tellingly, he uses the terms 'scientific' and experimental' interchangeably. See Lermoheff 1890-93, vol. 2, p. 3 ff. & 7' 37 Van Dantzig 1973. 38 Van Dantzig 1973, p. 49. 39 Van Dantzig 1973, pp. 10,17. 40 Van Dantzig 1947, pp. 58-60; Van Dantzig 1973, pp. 5-11. 41 References to Van Dantzig can be found in Van Leeuwen 1979, pp. 57-92; Bruyn et at 1982-, vol. I, p. XII; Groen/Hendriks 1990, pp. 109,119. References to Giovanni Morelli can be found in Wind 1963, pp. 32-51 and Maginnis 1990, pp. 104-17. 42 Maginnis 1990, pp. 110-13,117, notes 21, 22, 25. Yarbus 1967, p. 193 ff. Earlier, Guv Buswell had done similar experiments; see Buswell 1935. Other studies cited by Maginnis include Mackworth/Brown 1970; Noton/ Stark 1971a; Noton/Stark 1971b; Gould 1976; and Hochberg 1978. 43 When figures are present, subjects tend to focus on facial expressions and the position of hands. See Maginnis 1990, p. no. 44 Maginnis 1990, p. 113. 45 Maginnis 1990, p. 115. The 'basta videre' phrase comes from the famous connoisseur of Italian paintings Bernard Berenson. 46 Among others, Dr. Jan van der Lubbe of the University of Delft is working on two projectsAuthenticity van Rembrandts etsen bepaald met artificiele intelligentie' and 'Objectherkenning. See Van der Lubbe 47 L^u/Farid 2005. This technique is used in American courts to check photographic evidence for possible 48 J^SHS^Wd 2004; see also Rockmore/Lyu/Farid 2005/06; and Rockrnore/Leibon 2007. 49 Rockmore/Lyu/Farid 2005/06, p. 20. ,Wrminine of literarv authorship. 50 The technique also bears similarity to computational approaches ?*^^2S« article on stvlom-See Rockmore/Lyu/Farid 2005/06, p. 14. The authors refer to the following introductory ar etry: Holmes/Kardos 2003. Research Project stated they would research 51 In their grant application, the members of the ^randt Kc^ J ^ esthetische beoordeling en the paintings 'niet alleen met de als vanouds onontbeerlijRe natuurwetenschappelijke en iconologische inzichten en archivalische gegevens, maar 00k met gebruik technische onderzoeken'. See Grijzenhout 2007, p. 34- ^ Gerson's I969 catalogue ot Rem 52 After the first volume had been published, the project «o« consmunts. See Grijzenhout 2007, P. 4» brandt paintings as their point of departure, mostly published. When the project started in 1968, Gerson's catalogue had not yet p 255 54 60 TMl F,YB Of I HK CONNOISSIup NOTES CHAPTER I s md I complete listing of all the published volumes, see the Rubeni-■ »■,..■!hi-i-information on the scries inum website: http."w™ Yl XII Sec Bun-hard et fi .968;. vol-I, ^ mnn stated: 'As long as basics have not been established, inter-,.W thil reason, Egbert Havcrkan, p K ^ ^ ^ ^ an(J artistic context of the works remains ,rt,,,onotRubcns'r<)lcs...Hlottne. _j nn rQ87, pp. 5i6-i7- Since then, several individual Sis 55 ^no,ab,y Van Hout 2°°5- 56 Gerson 1968, p. 160. 57 Bredius/Gerson 1969, p. XII. fcssofS ofart history at the University of Utrecht, were originally s8 jan Emmens and an van 1, ^ ^ jp ^ Van Gelder increasingly withdrew from participation also members ot tnt projtti. ' from 1974 onward. ^ ^ ^ example of such optimism can be found in Gerson's monograph on 59 ReXnd Serson^cculatcd that 'the standards of scientific connoisseurship would be more universally applied in the future, once most paintings would have been absorbed mto museum collections. See Gerson Before the first volume of the Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings appeared, the Mauritshuis published a groundbreaking study that successfully combined thorough technical analysis with art-historical interpretations; DeVries et al' 1978. For example, the interpretation of the painting Study of a Man Laughing is remarkable for its depth and the diversity of information studied. See De Vries et al. 1978, pp. 48-55. 61 Bruyn et al. 1982-, vol. I, p. XII. The tests were executed by J. Bauch, D. Eckstein and P. Klein. 62 Van de Wetering 1986. 63 Further research might still yield some new insights, as some information about the various paint layers can also be seen in infrared reflectographs and increasingly refined cameras make it possible to recognize thin underdrawings which earlier models cannot distinguish. See also below. 64 Ainsworth et al. 1982. Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer is one of the few undisputable Rembrandts, as its provenance can be securely traced back to its seventeenth-century Italian owner, Don Antonio RufFo, who commissioned the work from Rembrandt. See also the discussion of the test results in Bruyn et al. 1982-, vol. I, e.g., nos. C68, C69. 65 Bruyn et al. 1982-, vol. I, XIV. Sixteen C-paintings in vol. 1 are called later imitations, three in vol. 2. See also Schwartz 1993. As many artists's oeuvres have not yet been thoroughly researched, no definitive conclusion can be drawn as of yet. 67 See Sheldon/Costaras 2006, pp. 93-94. See Duparc 2006. (Duparc's earlier insights into attributions to Fabritius were beautifully confirmed by these finds). 69 Bruyn et al. 1982-, vol. I, pp. XII ff. 70 Bruyn et al. 1982- vol. I, p. XVI. For a response to these particular conclusions, see 'Editorial' 1983, P- 662-niauJTw 7 "V^ X° *° pr°Ve that Rembrandt was not only consistent in his painting tech-good case [ U t W COnVentional Procedures. And on the evidence presented they have so far made a of the three nietureTof'tK "£ °f thumb'* does P«se some awkward problems, such as the question Salzburg ou 22nl ™ dlmensions Pointed on gold ground on copper. After much agonising, the ^ntZZZ^T5 1S,accepIed'whereas the Stockholm A^ 2- «* -d the H^e Bustofa not be positively eXac 'f/^ titled limbo of "Paintings Rembrandts authorship of which can; 'Editorial' 1983 p 662- HniL. ^ 'ejected"> technique arguing in favour of the attribution, style against. 7* Ernst van de WeterW ZZ 7u*C&™nn ^ P- 5*. See also Schwartz 1984, p. 60. the debate on this topic seeT , P£>}Cm to Va" de Wetering 1986. For a more extensive overview ot Style'. P1C' see chaP^r 4, Without Changing his Manner": Seventeenth-Century Views on 73 Bruyn et al iq»-> 1 n 74 In 2007 FramGrij^nho' n°S' ^ ™d C(>9'esP" PP- 747"48 beheved already ^Zl^S^S^ ^ Ernst v™ ^ Wetering that indicate that the latter Kembrandt was solved in the creation of the portraits, although he mav not 256 MIT CONNOISSEUR NOTES CHAPTER lid not includ c a minority 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 tonal' IQQ2. have worked up mow than the woman's hand. Ncvcrthclch Vi opinion in the Corpus entries. Grijzenhout 2007, p 48 Kirby Talley 1989, p. 202 ff. Liedtke 1989, pp. 37,-7*. See also 'Edi Kirby lalle) 1089, pp. 202,208. Various scholar, argued the need tor ■ category I>, 'Rembrandt with the assistance of others' See I iedtke 1989, pp. 371-7»; Editorial 199a, p. 28s; and Wtstermami 2002, p m ' ,cdtkc See Bruyn et al., 1982-, vol. I, nos. A22, C22, C26; vol. II, n,, H8, C7o, C7i; vol. Ill, no. C,o8 An important reason to, the older members ... retire after the publk .ÜOtl of volume f [. in ,989 was that the next hitch of paintings that they intended to catalogue proved rather resistant to dear daZft .mon After 1642 Rembrandt s production seemed to have Collapsed for some tune, which did not allow for the kind of very precise analysis of the master's style and technique that the authors had presented m the previous volumes. See Gnjzcnhout 2007, p. 49. v The expression is taken from Grijzcnhout 2007, p. 52. Bruyn et al. 1993; Van de Wctcring 1993a. Van de Wetering/Broekhoff 1996. 1 would like to thank Judith Noorman for this observation. See Groen 2005a and Groen 2005b. In his 1993 letter to the editor of The Burlington Magazine, Van de Wetering stressed that the project's principal goal is still - and has always been - to define the extent of Rembrandt's painted oeuvre using all the methods available to us'. Van de Wetering 1993, p. 764. See in particular Van de Wetering 2006 and Van de Wetering 2008, pp. 84, 88. On the first team's assumptions about style, see also below, 'Epilogue: A Disputed Rembrandt'. In Corpus V (2010) Van de Wetering identified three further collaborations, all small-scale history paintings done after 1642: nos. V7, V8 and V24. On Rembrandt's workshop practice, see also below, chapter 3, p. 83fr. Bruyn et al., 1982-, vol. I, p. XV. Bruyn et al. 1982-, vol. I, p. XVII. For this reason, he even believed rational descriptions could be dangerous. See Van de Wetering 2005a, p. XIII. '[...] das eigentliche Erkennen einer Künstlerindividualität in einem Gemälde [ist] ein intuitiver Prozeß, das ebensowenig nach angebbaren Regeln vor sich geht, wie etwa das Erkennen einer Stimme am Telephon'. See Gombrich 1952, p. 656. Schwartz 1988, p. 265; Miedema 1989, p. 51. Schwartz's comment in footnote 13 (p. 267) seems particularly telling in this respect. Referring to a paper by David Ebitz, in which the latter had praised connoisseurship as an instance of irrational knowing by recognition rather than by analysis, Schwartz remarks: 'I would not be quite as content as he seems to be to regard my scholarly work as a universal physiological process attended by rationalization after the fact.' Schwartz also points out that the assumption that an.artist: leaves a recognizable 'fingerprint' in any work he produces has never been proven; see Schwartz 1988, p. 2 5. also Schwartz 1993. Pacht 1986 (ed. 1999), p. 67. Pacht 1986 (ed. 1999), p. 66. For an overview of late twentieth-century research on the topic see Lieberman 2000 p. Gladwell 2005, pp. 3-17. See also Hoving 1996, pp. ^^^^'^ pp. 8-xo. Bechara/Damasio/Tranel/Damasio 1997; Damasio 1994, P- *12- See Aso Wadweu * Gladwell 2005, p. 48 ff. Gladwell 2005, pp. 263-64. t ( t master or, on the contrary, a f< ;d a pain mg v*6 f ^ A* noted ab« lower or forger) may also influence the connoisseur sji On a more subtle level, assumptions about who created a painting v- JT ^fa*. As noted above, onnoisseur's judgment ot the W**r™ P£ pain\ing was exposed the perception of the quality of Van toejp«*n* ^^^^^Sfouattty of paintings is described as a fraud. In attribution matters it is often striking how the work Though this when their attribution changes, even when the same expert ^ reader of one's judgment, I am could be done maliciously to massage the evidence in order too of (altered) subconscious inclined to believe that it is not so much a conscious action but rather 257 TM1 IY1 ()f TM1 connoisseur [APTBR i 4 U u Alfred Yirbus' experiments indicate, can truly make us look differ - -uld be . fa. I999, ca, nos. r4a 8c + Wad urn 2000. Grimm WPP- 20-28 VVh.tc.m. ,Viniition and Virtuosity'. Sluifter 2000. Sec also below, cnaprt 4. ^ r|u, f ()f., (i(.,vr (|l.b.m. m thc |aff. nm(.f(.,mh 1 . ^fintrlv these very same paintings naoaiicrtu7 Interestingly,tnese yw7 1 c^iien 200a introduction. ,im) VAYU twentieth century See Scaiicn^ * f ^ lV;iriation and Virtuosity' in chapter 4. Oil then issue, see chapter 2, t tip «1 demarcatiecriterium binnen het oeuvre van Rubens 'He, hantcrn van het begr.p e.genhand.ghe.c1.. R ,uctie/ Balis 2007, p. 38. See also Balis ,093. ^s^£S^Ss^^'Balis 2°°7'pp'36,49'no,e fe ST catalog,,,. Sec IWn ,98,, no. 3, pi. i and p 49, % » The p.cture was first de-a,tr,buted by Lyckle de Vries in De Vrics 1981. j ira i i •Zo wordt in Fabritius' Portrct van Abraham de Potter - .emand van ongeveer dczelfde leeftijd als de ge-helmde man - de dunne, doorschijnende huid onder de ogen mede gesuggereerd door de donkere onder-lug die in dit gebied doorschemert, terwijl in de Man met de helm hetzelfde gebied wordt weergegeven door op elkaar geplaatste, tamelijk pasteuze toetsen verf van verschillende kleuren.' See catalogue entry 13 by Ariane van Suchtelen in Duparc et al. 2004, pp. i47_5°-Brown 2006, p. 140. All twelve works were included in the recent Fabritius exhibition. See Duparc et al. 2004. 'Parce qu'il nest pas aise, dit Pamphile, de decider ainsi sur toutes sortes de Tableaux, 8c que j'aime mieux me take que de prononcer au hazard./ Quoy, repliqua Damon, vous voulez qu'un tableau demeure sans nom, 8c que les connoisseurs ne le puissent trouver?/ Pourquoy non, repartit Pamphile; il y a eu dans toutes les Ecoles de Peinture quantite d'habiles gens qui ont fait de belles choses, 6c dont le nom n'est pas venu jusqu a nous, ou parce qu'ils n'ont pas vecu long-temps, ou parce qu'ils ont demeure presque toute leur vie chez des Maistres, dont la grande reputation n'a pas permis a leurs Disciples de sen acquerir une particu-liere. Et quand on connoistroit toutes les manieres, 8c les noms de tous les Peintres, il y a des Tableaux si douteux, que ce seroit une temerite de vouloir assurer du nom de leur Auteur. La pluspart des habiles Peintres ont passe dune maniere a une autre, 8c dans ce passage, ils ont fait des Tableaux qui ne tiennent, ny de la premiere maniere, ny de la seconde./ e'est a dire franchement, interrompis-je, qu'en fait de Peinture vous ne faites pas grand cas de la connoissance des noms./ Au contraire, repartit Pamphile, ie la loue fort; 8c si Ton a un beau Tableau (quand mesme on n'en connoistroit pastoute [sic] la beaute) il est toujours fort agreable d'en scavoir l'auteur. Mais a vous dire les choses comme elles sont, la veritable connoissance de la Peinture, consiste a scavoir si un Tableau est bon, ou mauvais; a faire la distinction de ce qui est bien dans un mesme Ouvrage, d'avec ce qui est mal, 8c de rendre raison du jugement qu'on en aura porte.' De Piles 1677» PP- 5-7- On trouve dans les Tableaux ces deux caracteres: celuy de la main, est l'habitude que chaque Peintre a contractee de mamer le Pinceau; 8c celuy de l'esprit est le Genie du peintre. II paroist dans ses inventions, aans air particular qu'il donne aux figures, 8c aux autres objets qu'il represente, 8c selon que ce Genie est De^PilesTe^'pp ,0-*! PeintrCS' n°US diS°nS qUe leUrS °uvraSes sont d'un bon ou d'un mauvais goust. nmmTnn\^ "'I'' fTne qUe SUr deS man*ues fort sensibles ^ fa observees le mieax que jay f> tres ont affects ""^leS COuleurs fortes ou foibles, certains airs de testes que quelques Pein- enfin un )e n.LZT^ T^tlUons de draPeri^ <*e coiffures, d'ajustemens, 8c de figures toutes enrieres; * PamphufobseZr^t ^ ** ^ teUement la veue/ De PUes ,677. pp. n-12. un peu superficielle & ™, J^^. ^ vous [i.e. la connoissance des manieres] est une connoissance "ie sens fort bien que toute" mem°ire * ^ de part ^Ue le J^ment', which Damon subsequendy confirms: De Piles 1677, ppM9 I2 CCS marc>ues e«erieures viennent plustost de la main du Peintre que de sa teste- 3 *^z^*:bo7>third pw genie grand &c solide> dowk ^ IT SurPrennent ne sont point un effet du hazard, elles partent d un portrait se vott presque en autant de taVons que Rubens a fa.t de Tableaux./ 258 I Ml ( ONNOISSI (IR J <*** «m*m,« r;*» ■'■.,i.l,..1„..|11:...... "P*. pour en fair, un autre dan. un „, ." "" " ;s,,, .„„! cou„t„-,,„,■v,r„,„n ,„„,n-,„77,„,Jl} tJ s,„. iU Ol commc Rubens n'avoit pres.,,,,. poim . ,■ j' . . , demployer tousiours les me.me. teintea * I, 1 lw,"""«e de manier le ■*«„, tomme [ ] ,1 es, for, differ de. ,utrcs '."""T- * "» un n„uve.„, l",""?'] nempeselH- pas que dans la diventa de ses Tableau i 7. ' ""' que f"n''» °"vraa«- m",Zt & U'V °nt ' fern,e & dass die Uns Von dem Supplicanten verkaufte* stück keine jnre Ungmahen sondern nur nachgemachte Copien seijn'; see Lammerste/Van der Veen 2006, p. 83, note 27 not A llakeNAter by UylCnbUrgh m the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, 1 HA Rep 76, Alt III, no. 167; GAA dated Uanuarv PPj 7I~7T2' dated 9 September 1672; and GAA, not. A. Lock, NA 2241a, pp- ^ Bosse 1649, PP. 4-< 3° '1 ] semp Krinze, nella e^ahufdov ^^"T ^0 in cettl sentimenti di termine, per esempio ne' muscoü, nejl* manieracon il saper deUWento k T*° l'osservanza del vi™ quanto che la fierezza et risolutione *J ««i fieri et DMCmti ' M in.in /m' 'lualclue coP»a, per intelligenti et osservanti che sia, mai puö t>*a lanum/Marucchi/Salerno ,956-57, p. 327. 28 29 260 ON NO I SS F 11 N NOTI I H A Fl fVlarucchi and Salerno tranacribed the text with thr \ ^USCript COUld not be deciphered, I checked ., several Ä ^ *■* itt ** origW BiWioteea Nationale in Florence. The dots were nuleed^ ?*» ** ,hV7>"7 hfd «»r trouble reading the or,, We< ?„ T TT** ' « "o , intention to fill in the lacuna later. g ' ' Can ,ss"'nc thtit these dots reflect Man, ,r„ Wtmp«vi.iaqualchediffer«nza^ . . petto ..I tempo ph, antico [...]'. Mancirü/Mai-„c1,,/Salerno u f> ^ SCmpre P'U umfl n" 1...1 prima se nclla pittura proposta vi lia anale n.-rft-tt, ' i P I*7' quale vien proposta e venduta; di p,ü sc v ved 'h, ' T "*to "ome del Salerno 1956-57, p. 134. 1 del mastro [...]'. Mancini/Marucchi/ '[...] in particolare in quelle parti che di necessity ' A ßmmititione, come sono in parucolw i coeffi I,'ClhT"v rls"'u""nc nc P™°" ben condurre con da imitate, si fanno con Stenn,, che „oll • « ^ ■>"*r *' «** S-ndo s, han non hanno la pcrtettionc di mastro. E c,ue c par ncT n n.ra s" C"m"" T ' *Uhora che voghon ,ueU. rrnachezza c resolole SSZHZ * 52? "t botte di lume a luogo a luogo, che dal mastro ven*on posri a «,r,7 , "T a'CUn' Sp'r"' C immnabile; cosi neile piegne di pann, e lor ^ ÄSCÄT che^della venta dell, cosa posta ,n essere.' Mancini/Marucchi/Salerno ,9S6-57) p. m. See also mZ^! Vico r555> PP- 61-67. See Muller 1989, p. 142. Van Mander 1604, fols. i76v-i77r. 'Niet onvoeghlijck sal wesen te verhalen, dat Ttztano in zijn jonekheyt een ander handehnge hadde, soo als in zijnen ouderdom: want eerst maeckte hy zijn dingen heel net, dat-ment soo geern van by als van verre sagh: en ten lesten wrocht hy zijn dinghen met cloecke pinceel-streken henen, en ghevleckt, soo dat het van by geen perfectie, maer van verre te sien, goeden welstandt hadde. En dit is oorsaeck gheweest, dat vele, die dit hebben willen volghen, willende hun bewijsen te hebben veer-dighe handelinge, hebben gemaeckt dingen, die plomp, en onbequaem te sien waren. En dit comt daer by, dat vele meenen, dat dese dinghen van Tiziano ghedaen zijn sonder arbeydt, maer sy dolen, en bedrieghen hun selven: want men siet mercklijck, datse dordaen, en weder herdaen zijn, soo veel revsen, dat men daer arbeydt genoech in siet. So dat dese maniere van doen verstandich, welstandich, en uytnemende is: want het de Schilderije een levendicheyt gheeft, wesende ghedaen met groote Const, den arbeydt verbergende.' Van Mander 1604, fol. 37r-v: 'Een aerdigh en fraeye manier van bladen,/ Op eenen goeden slach, hem aen te wennen,/ Want hier in leyt de cracht, dit moetmen kennen./ Al soudemen soecken op veel manieren,/ nae t'leven, oft handelingh aenghename,/ Ghestadelijck op grondighe papieren,/ Met sap al wasschende blad-ers te swieren,/ Hopend' ofmer al metter tijdt toe quame:/ Doch, ten schijnt niet alst bemuysde lichame/ Leersaem Const: want bladen, hayr, locht, en laken,/ Dat is al gheest, en den gheest leert het maken./ Verscheyden bladers machmen wel ghebruycken.' Hessel Miedema suggests that this passage is inspired by Rivius's translation of Alberti's De pictura although, as Miedema indicates, the similarities are to be found more in the language than in the content: 'Dieweil aber yede bewegung, auch deren dmg so klein leben haben, im gemehl auffs fleissigst angezeigt werden sollen, vvirt es nit weniger lieblich und anrnut-tig sein zu schawen, wo solche bewegung an hären und harlocken, an zweigen, laub und Wettern, und in Sonderheit ans gewandt, mit einem fleisz und verstand! angezeigt wmfc Indeed on ^^^ZS tu ■ -1 • • . •, • ll+ksuurti iris interesting that both Rivius and Van Mander single out fright, left, up, down and circular) that Alberti rec_c^ ^Q^^f^^ (Alberti himself did not single out drapery in this «^>** ™ £ q[ ,eaves) j ds on thc drtist>s Van Mander declares that the depiction of drapery (more th an^hai a r " ^ £ not seem f() mcm spirit ('gheest'), a thought that is absent in Rivius f^^^^A^ W, are singled out. This anything more than 'sensibly'. In Van Mander s text, j^^C^2ond poem 'De Grondt...'. bur aft. line of thought reappears throughout his treatise, twice i ^ ^ those or'prans Floris, Anthon.c when he discusses the characteristics of individual artists 1 . Qvvn Hand'). It seems safe to Hlocklandt, I lans I lolbein and Lucas van Leyden; see alsc, chapW: 3. «X assu.ne that Van Mander expresses here a coherent ,dea ot h,s ow . See the previous note. 261 TMI FYB OP THE CONNOIflftKt/R NoI IS (MAP I H 42 |„„........•H^^^A)* Van I long«««. W-J™ ' ' . . . in (|c k„pyen met vcelc Kcbrcckrn „mrmtf xijn, min ■0„k ,„-t mcn.dat de denken . <- 1 ,„,, ,,.tt,r/(.,t,r n.i.- <-<-ni, Ii mocyl.ik - hr.l. ^flamff „,„„,,. .,,„ ,|,. pbukM Madcrcn.van ecnch of omk«ren. Da« dan noch aldermeot in dc ,,| taAfcuten cnt.-yl.-n ^,n < .c < cn ■ ^ , ^ ( p ^ 0„ .harmon|(, an(J , ■<), omme le IVintre qui imitc le Nature!, ne v.et pima.s , la mcsmc perfection d .celuy; a.ns, ^Xbüity of equaling natura echo rWi d die v.sual arts. Similar thoughts can be found in ,Jm Italian art-theoretical treatises, including Leonardos notes on pamt.ng (as quoted in GombricMr/ W///«-wo«. iq6o (ed. 1989). PP-96-97)- . f . . . . - . I m Ouvrages de Pcinturc qui sont faits d'une maniere libre Oil franc he, flc en quelque sorte artistcment touchee, & d'une grandc union, 6c non trainee ou pratiquee ä coups de pointe de pinceau, sont assez difficile ft Uniter, cn sorte qu'on ne connoissc en eux la peine au'a eue le Copiste en les imitant; De plus, il voit aussi cn son Original, qu'un seul coup de pinceau a fait ce qu'il I bien peine de faire en cent, öcqu'une partie de la cause vie[n]t, qu'il nc pcut avoir aux occasions des pinceaux semblables ceux dont Ion s'est servy; Car chacun scait & principalement ceux qui ont pratique ces choses, que celuy qui fait un Tableau Original, ce sert d'ordinairc plusicurs fois des mesmes pinceaux, 6c quelquefois jusques ä un point, que la pluspart sont quasi usez 8c qu'il les trouve bien souvent meillcurs ayant servy qu'autrement, 6c mesme que plusieurs les avant neufs, les coupent 6c usent par endroits, pour estre plus doux par les boux 6c qu'ils ayent diverses pointes ou formes irregulieres, afin qu'ayans ä faire plusieurs choses, comme des cheveux ou autres poils, faisant touffes, floquets, ou friseures, 6cc. [...].' Bosse 1649, p. 60; see also Muller 1989, p. 144. 44 Bosse 1649, p. 58; see also Muller 1989, p. 144. 45 According to the Italian art theorist Filippo Baldinucci as well, it is easiest to spot copies in sketchy drawings, where the free execution of the original is the most difficult to imitate. In a letter dated 1681 to the Marchese Capponi, he wrote: 'Questa universal regola della maggiore o minor franchezza nell'operare, ha luogo anocora nelle cose colorite.' See Muller 1989, pp. 144,148, note 27. 46 'C'est [...] l'opinion de plusieurs Copistes, 6c mesme des Peintres Originaux [..J que e'est le Temps qui leur a donne cette Teinte tant soit peu jaunastre; le scay bien qu'il y a des Couleurs 6c des huiles, qui font que le Temps opere en quelque sorte sur icelles, mais neantmoins ceux qui ont les yeux un peu clair-voyant, discernent bien que cela n'est pas de la mesme Teinte, de celle desdits Originaux'. Bosse 1649, p. 59- 'Un bon Copiste se trouve aussi souvent tres-empesche, de rencontrer des Huiles 6c des Couleurs qui puis-sent estant broyees 8c aliees ensemble, 6c en suitte appliquees, demeurer apres queues sont seiches de la mesme Couleur &cTeinte que celles de son Original, principalement quant il est vied fait [..J Ceux qui se sont adonnex ä la pratique de Peindre, 6c ä telles particularity, scavent distinguer les Couleurs qui sc sont mortes ou passees prompetement, d'entre celles qui le font des long-temps.' Bosse 1649, PP- 63"64- 0n Mancini, see Manci/Marucchi/Salerno 1956-57, pp. 54-55. U ord,na.re chaque Peintre ä une maniere affectee, si ce n'est a fair, disposicion, ordonnance 6c agencemenr corps qu il veut y representor, ce sera en la forme ou Colory, ou au maniment du Pinceau.' Bosse 164* p. 47. ' 4» Felibien ,666-88 (ed. 1706), pp. I22-23. So Although Phe;,endr0it qUdqUC SOrtC licU ^ sa main.' Bosse 1649, p. 7. theory the term •itTt'mitat,ng (h^ long held a prominent place in both literary and art * 5prLdov;;;;:;;:::;:.,rnotuscdtodenotcaspccific«*« »erittc non , ,,(„ (t() ((>|. ^ Slan,> t(,PR' «> «»riKni;ili, c he delle serirture e l.bri si dice an-herypo come f***> fatta ad escmpio d'un'altr ° ' P't^'ra'SC ,,nma hltta 0 °"ginali come dicono, o copiata et secondariamentc 52 1-1 platten de „H-este kr TT he!\'j>,i, 1 i.«,,,, gncmacKi nchhc-n, worden alhiei doo, den rn.'Junius 1641, p. H4. «n naem van «,ri,.....I, „„ 1 . ,nn,s,c>,8(cd.n,H).p ,06.The.........n,o,i,,,rrms^ ,/(m| De ¥«111969, pp. I05-II, esp. p. 109. "Rimeix •| I chose de laquelle on nc pumt trouver semblable dan, la n iturc - Bo On the dc,rl,T,nV„, ol the term 'onfln,l,,;,H,,l,0fl(,p,.);Mooj......„ See also below, [tie reputation of the coov funiun* hivton ,■ c . ~pi« >— - «pre8. ',i„.....Jlm.........w"h,'T,";.............. More than that, this juxt.po.iHon could readih ........., , ">P.V apparently held forhkn. "'r;'.........^^lÄtteÄt Paradox of Seventeenth I entury Connoisteuflhip'. «mcnra.ana 1 he In tact, the Dutch term firindfHaJCOmtt from ICCOtintirnj and refers 10 the pr,n( ,p;i, rr„m wh|ch interest .8 harvested. In painting, the /w/,,r.)WiS worth more because it could be used for'exclusive c.pv mg as long as the owner could control the distribution of the image. In addition, better copies could be m«de from a /-m, ,/Wthan from a copy, according to Marten Jan Bok Set Slmjter 2008, p 26 note 60 See the extensive discussion of the concept of rapen and the extent to which it was allowed according to kaiel Vtn Mandcr, Philips Angel, Samuel van Hoogstraten and Arnold Houbraken in Sluijter 2006, pp. 253-56. See also chapter 6, 'Invention, Composition and Design'. ' Verscheyde modellen van myn geschildert naer Poelenburch, en dat dependent is aen mijn studi en behoort tot myn doen off schilderen.' Inventory of goods drawn up at the occasion of the wedding contract between E. Johan van Haensbergen and Sophia van der Snouck, 1679. Bredius 1915-21, vol. 6, p. 2077 (no. 64). 'Rafael d'Urbijn, Bonaroti en al de treffeliijckste Meesters [...] dickmael niet ontsiende daer uyt heelc stucken in hun wercken te voegen [...] En van geen ander verstandt zijn de liefhebbers; als die gemeenlijck voor't beste van hun wercken dat oordeelen het welck meest heeft van die oude voorbelden.' Van Gelder/ Jost 1985, preface addressed to Constantijn Huygens, p. 3. See also chapter 6, note 91. '[...] tis vrv wat anders yet te ondeenen om sijn onvolmaecktheyt tot een meerder volmaecktheyt te breng-hen, dan dat het is yet, niets deughende te voeghen by het gene dat nu al-reede goet is, want het eenen dient tot loff van de Meester, daer het af-genomen wert: daer de andere slordighe byvoeginge tot puere nadeel van den geen street daer het by ghevoecht wert.' Angel 1642, p. 36. Loh 2004, p. 498. 'Tableaux qui ne sont ni Originaux, ni Copies, lesquels on appelle Pastiches, de l'ltalien, Pastia, qui veut dire Pätez: parce que de meme que les choses differentes qui assaisonnent un Pate, se reduisent ä un seul Gout; ainsi les faussetez qui composent un Pastiche, ne tendent qua faire une verite.' De Piles 1699 led. 1715), p. 78, as translated in Loh 2004, p. 498. '[...] pour ne s'y point laisser tromper, il faut examiner, par comparison ä leur modele, le Gofc du Des-sein, celuy du Coloris, 6c le Caractere du Pinceau.' De Piles 1699 (ed. W& P- 79- In h.s rr.insl.mon of l)u Fresnoy's Arte graphica, De Piles indicated that goust was also used to indicate a 'manner. bee De Piles 1668-73,'Goust'. jj 1 1 '[...] anders dan simpel-nakopieeren dat voor de Jongelingen wel een bequaan, ,„.dd,l is, om voor eers de Pinceel te leren handelen, een maniere van schilderen te krijgen, de Vervven en Kolonien te leeren vmden. enz.'Goeree 1670 (ed. 1697), p. 84. .««- ,Ti ,.„r i.l,. Among them are Mancini and Bosse. Junius does not entirely exclude the possib, ,ry: Itoml. I rha „ the most consummate pieces of excellent masters can seldome doe ,t so well, bu away from the original.'Junius 1638 (ed. 199O, p. »* See also below. I he Repuranon ot the C 00, Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 179. See below, 'The Reputation of the Copy*. ()UVranes, parce qu'il luv aura phi. OH parce 'II n'y a presque point de Peintre qui n'ait repete quclqu un de * ^ rlu. ,,.,,,,„ u nrer qu'on luy en aura demande un tout semblable/ D^^^ ^ p. SS; see Shu.rer 200,. p « Francesco Saverio Baldinucci gave similar advice in Baldinucu/ivia W3 1 and note 26. „ . s. uu'cllcs auront ore euvutc p.u Ac '.. y a des Copies qui ne se peuvent U,L *......»<< bons Copistes, Sedans le mesme temps des Originaux t.ai 2M THE EYE OF THE CONNOJSSf-(/« mm I l< ~4 , , I lit. Oriirimux & (iui mcsmc It-s aura retouches en divers endroirs.' Botti .649,,, <)t) "lm qU1 r Irnich« .1 M loil UN* liu ill dc rcconnoistre tells retouchemer», mai* non '1- P.1— de « 'J" 2 |Vinm.s qui com«««** d'estre , apables de bien faire d'lnvenrion; K, 2 \ ffÄ av, S. & nnis; lay aussi vue divers Exce.lens Peintrcs, retou,»,, I; n en, but des Copi« reite. ch« eux d'apres lens ()euvres, s, artistemcnt par des coups com™ * I,",! 1, sec, qu'une pertonne tant soit pea verse en ccs particulars 1« auro.t reconnus d abord. Bosse Wto!röli que Bourdon avoit .nis sa manicre dans quelques plis de la drappcrie et cela me fit evanter il .„ine." 1 loiirticq 1905, as cited in Brown i<)<)S> fp, V> See also the next chapter, '"By his Hand": The Paradox of Seventeenth-Century Connoisseurship'. ■M.us poui lei MhkauX dc Gerard I tow, on pent y estre fourbe. J en ay une copie ou de tres bons peintres ont este trompes.' I lourticq igos, p. \V}> lreart de Chantelou/Blunt ig«s, p. ■£« Bernini also singled out drapery in a painting as characteristic of IWin's manner (on the same page). Sec also below, chapter J, 'Masterly Passages*. n Dc Marehi/Van Miegroet 199ft. It speaks for itself that copies cost less than originals, especially if they were not done by the master himself or were not of similar quality. For example, copies by Van Goyen's pupils after works by the master were valued at only about 1/5 of the price of the originals. See Sluijter 1996, p. 42 (unabbreviated version available via the author). 76 De Marchi/Van Miegroet 199ft, P- 55- 77 De Marchi/Van Miegroet 1996, p. 58. 78 'Sien dat Ul betaelt hadde acn Simon de Vos hondert guldens voor 2 principaelen ende 2 coppien, dat my dunct abus moet wesen, want voor myn verreck [sic] hem 2 principaelen betaelt hebbe, ende de coppien en connen maer de helft van de principaelen bedraegen.' Letter from Chr. Immerseel to Antoon Cossiers 1636, in Denuce 1934, p. 108; see also De Marchi/Van Miegroet 1996, p. 70. 79 Brown 1995, p. 29. 80 Van Eikema Hommes 2004. See also Carlyle 1998. 81 Van Mander 1604, fols. *5v-*6r, 84x. 82 See Honig 1995, pp. 269 ff., 289-90 and note 65. 83 This story was first told by Vasari and subsequently repeated by, among others, Van Mander 1604, fol. i26r-v; Baldinucci in 1681, cited in Bottari/Ticozzi (eds.) 1822-25, v°l- 2> PP- 506-07; and De Piles 1699 (ed. 1715), pp. 99-102. 84 On Rubens's copy, see Muller 1989, pp. 145,149, note 35. On Lievenss copy after Ketel, see Orlers 1641, p. 376. For a similar anecdote about Van der Werff, see Houbraken 1719-21, vol. 2, p. 21. On such successful copies, see also Liedtke 1997. 85 Mancin'i/Marucchi/Salerno 1956-57, p. 135. On Van Poelenburch's copies, see Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, app. II and Boers-Goosens 2004, p. 217; on Van Miens, see Sluijter 1988, pp. 34-36 and Aono 2008. 87 See above, p. 52. 88 See above, p. 61. [.-] veele [...] dryven dat den eygenaer veel afgaet wanneer hy van een schildery of ander fraeye konst vergunt aan .emant het gebruyck en macht om nae te maecken: vermits niet aleen daer aen gelegen leydt ,y hem deen en met by yder ^ können gesien werden, maer oock de waerde hier door af-slaet; alsoo de (edi^pY maCCkt' S°° VO°r CySenaer als die genegen mochte sijn te koopen.' De Bisschop 1689 9° V^Tt^^I^ (CdS) ,822"25' 2> PP- 226"3°; dS° MuUer PI47-m vC H°n,gI995'p'29°;Denutd (949.pp. tay-el 93 Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. i97 II SS; lfr*m r - 2reporKd in Mu,kr »• * w^cd ta Ca ztr* Cruc"j lfcmK,i"n • ,681' 97 bpear 1989, pp. 9?-99. " 11 '47- 264 I Ml I Yl Of J ||( 10 11 12 18 *9 in CI D «540: 'the heavy application of paint in the figures and backgroun I 1 ^ m:( ltu ■.,„„„ of form (even in the subtle treatment of Jonathans^ ,^ •"l.........I rlu-hounds of Hoi's rapah.ht.es. ^ the t,knHllv,How.n,nH-,o„u,lv Rembrandt's p.........g both on illlf, ,„, ^..... .....lÄhtt^c«Uaoo5. < ,ll,,ns 1 / md tie »65- (......brichtfw«**^ C*mbric^^^ Son a; Aug.it i9«JJ Bwynet -d. k,«2-.vo1. II 4 4 tKr issoc.atecl simpn"«-»"— — uvtuiv and the assoc ^ ^ ..nprcss.0.1, ot go.ng too rejection, Leonard Slatkes and Gary Schwartz still include , 5 .....4 See Slatkes W no. * PP. Sc W. ^ p ^ * 6 See \ an Gelder 1992, PP- I)" ,4. , ww ^r //^, wrkogt den Ap y 7 S- * 2« "v , M„. Van der . .cms ,.„«„*, Ag«h, J, U^Ct^ SSÄl^ £ Catholic community and church. See Von UifenhacS m^ in Lammertse 1992. PP- 23"24-« Graf von BtucUtsin 19*5* P« I9a- . rT^ ,, , , . See foe references to „Meenth-century prints of David and Jonathan and a painting by Rembrandt's teacher IVtc. -l.astman, Tümpel 1969. Vladimir Levinson-Lessing in a lecture given in 1956. Compare Biafostocki 1957, P- 4*2. See also Kistemaker/Kopaneva/Overbeek (eds.) 1996, pp. 258-59. Gary Schwartz holds a different view. He believes the picture was sold by Rembrandt as a painting of David and Jonathan, but nevertheless depicted .i different scene, namely Mephiboseth (Jonathan's son) thanking David for sparing his life, as described in Vondel's play Gebroeders (The Brothers) of 1640, see Schwartz 1985b, and below, note 19 and note 27. 'David en Jonathan, h. 2 en een half v. br. 2 en een half v. [=70.8 x 70.8 cm] door dezelve [i.e. Rembrandt]', Lugt 1938-87, vol. 1, p. 257, no. 40; Hoet 1752, vol. 1, p. 202. 13 These drawings were purchased by Lambert Doomer at the sale of Rembrandt's collection in 1658. Van der Hem presumably bought the Savery drawings from Doomer around 1665, the year in which Doomer made drawings for Van der Hem. See De Groot 2006, pp. 184-85, 222, note 35. Doomer is assumed to have studied with Rembrandt, who purchased picture frames from Doomer's father. 14 Jonckheere 2008a, pp. 49,53, 263. Koen Jonckheere kindly informed me that the price difference of 25 guilders between the two sales does not necessarily reflect a difference in appreciation, since the availability 01 similar paintings and the number of interested buyers present at a sale caused prices to fluctuate. Marten Jan Bok, Jaap van der Veen and Koen Jonckheere have identified three other paintings that were attached to Rembrandt's name in the seventeenth century and were subsequendv de-attributed in the twentieth Century:/««* Wrestling the Angel, c. 1660, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbeaa Gemäldegalerie; The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1657, The Royal Collection of her Majesty Qu*n frnln \°phT Hannah Wlth a Servant %• l6t5°], National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, on 0 rom the Duke of Sutherland. See Bok 1990; Jonckheere 2008a, pp. 54, 263; and Van der Veen W >6 BnTTT "'«DaVld™d]0nathan is u-q- among these works in that its provenance history h» fcCT P- 538- The authors first state that the painting s execution appears *** MV^T't X% WOrk' WHen disCUSsinS the Pötings colors, the authors specify chat The in anval ^To T' *»* Vdue that « P^ed side-by-side in the Leningrad tion'Thedi^ lSHand :The Paradox of Seventeenth-C tion 'The debate" A 7 * '"'l ' * ™ ot Seventeenth-Century Connoisseurship' above, P- °™ of the examnle!°Sr 1 the holy Srail of present-day connoisseurs?' when Pro- togenes put his oLtin c the ancient Painter Protogenes of the 4,h century ,k ~ «3!i^ff ? he --dgthat people only 296 rh, n i Ol i hi CONNOI8S1 LfR |u-, Matt jaei tu dato'. Van Gelder iu»-« , , ?m Vail I ,udick sold this dann to | [S*81 d* ri|)f|()n „ hsrs a by Rembrandt S^n" ^ " ■»• r "* V 'ho authors apparently assume that any later .'^ et al - vol [ n ,664/<), wh«^^' circa 1660. See also below (this section) *U1tl,t">n would have b«n' ^ 'nVe'*i5r 0 Worth Bracken kindly pointed out to me that " ^'"^ m the ^ of Re h to make the viewer imagine the most hitter grief h."!!! ! 'w,*'K»nisr\, fa, m, Albert! 1966, p. 78 and note 63, p. ,2?. ' n*rraf^ Wlfh *«*, lf m ^ 22 Worp ,891 pp. 125-26: 'ille, suae se industriae involvcns In ' **** S« eflcctum dare, quod m amplissinns aliorum fruatrt cp.acr" ^ **» *mat er 100. 1 Ucras- I he translation is taken fro SI ^P0"1'" 2j Angel 1642, 47-48, see above, chapter 6 'Invention C marks about a painting by Lievens in which the latter hJdSiÄ ^ C^ also At** re son Isaac just after he found out that he did not have to ,TT V P^mch Abraha", mbuZ h is gheoorloft dat yemandt om tot meerder veranderlicke kenl" I tt " Stake: 'S,et! d<* 4w Boeck doorlesen mach, het sy een die het breeder beschrijft of uvtle^ ST"*! te k°men' mc" * Z oordeel dat hy heeft, het eyghenlicxste en seeckerste moet n,b T Y 'den StM*'* heeft is ghelooffelick, schoon de Bybeldzcr gheen ghewach neT !T ^ h,ier ghebodt fefe) los ghestelt, ende soo hy de beghee'rte (MsT^^^ 2 Äfc ^ verlooren, maer hem dien door de ghenoechsame ghehoota^^ syns zoom^betoont hadde, wederom gegeven znnde, heeft buyten twijffel in dien oude VadmhJL ZrZ vreughde doen ontstaen, alsser te voren een harde en droeve indruck gheweest is, en sijn zoon buyten Irwijf-fel (dien hy als van de doodt sach weder komen,) daerom in sijn armen ghenomen, ende aen de borst ghe-druct [...] Soo dat sulcke onghemeene eyghentlickheden gheoorloft zijn, ende ten hooghsten prijsselijck, wanneer een Schilder die betracht.' Angel 1642, pp. 48-49. 24 On appropriate colors for clothing, see also Tummers et al. 2007, pp. 55-56. '[...] alle färben mischen, brechen und von ihrer crudezza reduciren möge, bis dass in den Gemahlen 1. der natur ähnlich kommen. [...] is zu beobachten die disminuirung. dass man nach und nach, in gerechter Masse, sich verliere, und die Colorit ungehintert, nach der Perspectiv Regeln, von einem Bild zum andern netto folge und ihr Ort bekomme: welches wir auf Niederländisch Hauding nennen.^..] Und hierinn haben wir zu lernen [...] insonderheit von dem laboriosen und dissfalls hochvernüntt.gen Remb"nd: ^nJ/r in deren Leben zu ersehen, gleichsam Wunder gethan, und die wahre H«^^-^ besondern Farbe, nach den Regeln des Leichts, durchgehendes wol beobachtet 418; Slive I953, p. 90; Sluijter 2006, p. 2:4. On the power or Rembrandt tg*ings* dann, weil die saubere Umzüge sich an ihrem Ort correct solten ernn ^ ^ ZusjrnnKnhalrung denselben mit Finsterschwarz dergestalt aus, dasz er van solchen nn. ^ fa ^ Eintilt nicht der universal-Harmonia verlanget, in welcher letzten er ^^J. Colo'riten un starken Erheben z. allein stattlich auszubilden, sondern auch mit natürlichen J^^^S^v«H^« -re gewüst [...]> Slive I953, P- -8. The poet Andries ™f*^M * S **** * similarly praised Rembrandt for the successful houdtng \ p. 210 and Van de Wetering 1997, P- 252. , urushwork'. u ,.mMn that rhi> * See chapter 4, "Style and Location', and 6, 'Cotor, U*£>J£ ^ ,lw le„ boor «"£ „ 2? Only Gary Schwartz noticed the difference between^ .Jt.ntifif ,he ^ J — ,„,, difference might be intentional. As mentioned .bo« „ Vl,„del . « , „,,„„.-.,...... David (fac,ngSuS) and Meph.boseth (J«^^^ nght boot m,gb. N —' therefore rode a donkey. Schwartz beheves that the g ^ ^ M »,.h of Mephisobeth's lameness. Schwartz ■9«^'*^ „ his book In 2009 Ernst van de Wetering also included tne ) ]ig) ^ irf however discussing it in the text (Van de «-8°^. V, Sf°%££Z*U * Van de Wetering et al., A Corpus f«^Ä wer sollte uns K"" ^ 30 'Dte sind gar nicht so überflüssig. Wenn d.e «K*^ .|n Hartmann -9* 1 "nsere schlechten Bilder für unecht erklären., »97