Rembrandt

Happy Birthday Rembrandt!! Born in Holland in 1606, Rembrandt van Rijn was the son of a miller and grew up in a shack next to a windmill. He was a portrait painter as well as painter of genre and historical scenes. He was quite prolific, completing some 650 paintings, 300 etchings and nearly 2000 drawings! His family was often his models, his son Titus his favored model for Jesus. To look at his paintings, one would not know the unhappiness Rembrandt experienced, losing his entire family, one by one, long before he died in 1666. The house where he lived and worked is still standing in Amsterdam, Holland, and my family and I were privileged to visit it in 2006. The rooms remain as they stood when he lived there and I was most impressed by the storage room for his painting “props” a great room filled with rocks, shells, vases, feathers, hats and scarves for his patrons to wear and pose with. The studio is as if he left yesterday, palette and brushes in place, unfinished painting on the easel. My favorite is Supper at Emmaus, housed at the Louvre, depicting the risen Christ with two of his disciples at a humble table. I simply love the humanistic quality of Rembrandt’s Christ, subtly lit, creating a halo around his head, proclaiming His greatness.