STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
The most valuable of the three paintings that were stolen at an armed robbery at Nationalmuseum 22 December 2000 has been recovered in Copenhagen, one week before the opening of Nationalmuseum’s exhibition The Dutch Golden Age. Rembrandt, Frans Hals and their contemporaries.
On Rembrandt and the stolen Rembrandt painting (excerpt from the catalogue raisonnxc3xa9 Dutch and Flemish paintings II, Nationalmuseum 2005).
TECHNICAL NOTES:
Cleaning of the painting in 1991 revealed significant damage in the upper left and lower right corners.
The signature is in the damaged upper left corner and is therefore difficult to read.
It is possible to make out the letter R and the figures 163, possibly followed by a zero.
The support is a copper plate covered with a layer of white lead, subsequently entirely overlaid with gold leaf.
This portrait, purchased for the Nationalmuseum in conjunction with the Rembrandt exhibition of 1956, can be traced back to a number of auctions in Holland and to private collections in Paris.
When it was first sold in Rotterdam, it changed hands for thirty-five florins.
It was later acquired by the wealthy art collector Count Duchatel of Paris and by the painter, art writer and Ingres pupil Henri Delaborde, who became director of the Cabinet des Estampes at the Bibliothxc3xa8que Nationale.
It was in the home of Delaborde’s widow that Abraham Bredius saw the painting, which he subsequently borrowed for an exhibition in The Hague in 1903.
The portrait depicts the artist as a serious, rather gloomy young man.
He is portrayed against a greyish brown background, wearing a dark brown coat, under which we glimpse a dark red jacket, with a pleated white, Renaissance-style collar round his neck.
On his head he wears a black beret.
His face is modelled with fine, careful brush strokes.
The young man’s gaze is searching and concentrated.
Five paintings on copper by Rembrandt are known, and three of them have a gold-leaf ground: apart from the Stockholm painting, they are an Old Woman at Prayer in Salzburg and The Laughing Soldier in The Hague.
These works are similar in size and are dated to the same period.
According to Froentjes, they are probably by one and the same hand.
In earlier literature (Bode, Hofstede de Groot, Bredius, Gerson and others), this portrait was described as a work of Rembrandt.
The RRP, however, catalogued it in group B (i.e. works that cannot be regarded with certainty as executed by the master), on the basis that the technique of careful, precise brushwork was untypical of Rembrandt and the gold ground was so unusual.
In addition, the extensive retouching was seen as an obstacle to a confident assessment of the work.
After the painting had been cleaned in the Nationalmuseum’s conservation studio in readiness for the 1992 exhibition, it was easy to see the considerable similarities in terms of lighting, expression and character between this work and other early self-portraits.
In conjunction with the exhibition, moreover, the portrait was accepted as authentic by Ernst van de Weteringen and the RRP group.
The upshot of our joint discussion was that the Stockholm portrait, with its small format and special ground, required more detailed brushwork than the larger portraits on panel and canvas.
Rembrandt was presumably not averse at this time to experimenting with different techniques. Some scholars have pointed out that the execution of this small portrait is reminiscent of an etching or copperplate engraving.
During this period, Rembrandt was working on a number of self-portraits in these techniques, and therefore quite naturally had copper plate to hand.
His reason for using a gold leaf overlay could have been to give greater radiance to the colours.
The catalogue for the exhibition of Rembrandt’s self-portraits in London and The Hague in 1999 observes that the marked difference in style between the three small paintings on copper plate may perhaps have been intentional on the part of the artist.
In his didactic poem Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const (1604), the art theorist Karel van Mander (1548-1606) distinguished between “smooth” and “coarse” painting as two different techniques.
The three paintings demonstrate not only that Rembrandt had mastered both methods, but also that he was able to combine the two.
It is entirely possible, say the catalogue’s authors, that the three pieces were used in the workshop as examples for his pupils, who were thus able to acquaint themselves not only with three different techniques, but also with three different types of tronie: the old woman, the soldier and the youth.
Bron: ArtDaily
Compound Sketches door Farhad Arabi.
We gaan eerst iets eten in Amsterdam. De Maleisische keuken doen we eer aan.
Ei nog zonder sambal.
De sambal.
De salade in voorbereiding.
De gedekte tafel, we kunnen beginnen.
Even de auto parkeren.
Een eerste indruk van het prachtige toneel en decor.
We zitten.
Het spel kan beginnen.
De presentjes voor de sponsorvertegenwoordigers (de wijn is gesneuveld tijdens de voorstelling).
Voor de liefhebber het volledige artikel:LONDON, ENGLAND.- King Street –A rediscovered drawing by Andrea del Sarto, the last great Florentine artist of the High Renaissance, sold today at Christie’s in London for xc2xa36,504,000 / $11,395,008 / €9,586,896, a world record price for the artist. Head of St Joseph, a study for a picture now in the Pitti Palace, Florence, has become the third most expensive old master drawing ever sold at auction. A photograph from the 1920s had alerted scholars to the existence of this work, but its whereabouts have been a mystery. The work reappeared after more than 50 years in a private Swiss collection. The drawing was bought by Jean-Luc Baroni. Andrea del Sarto (Florence 1486-1530), the son of a Florentine tailor, began his training as an apprentice to a goldsmith. However, his talent for drawing rapidly emerged and he soon moved to the workshop of Piero di Cosimo. In 1508 Sarto became an independent artist, sharing his studio with his friend and contemporary Francabigio. He absorbed the artistic influences of the Florentine careers of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, and soon became the leading painter in the city, receiving commissions from religious orders, individual collectors and above all the Medici family. In 1518, with his reputation spreading, Sarto was summoned to the court of Franxc3xa7ois I, King of France. He returned to Florence in 1519 and resumed his intensely busy career, which was cut short by his death from the plague in 1530 at the age of only 44. The drawing sold at Christie’s is a study for the head of Saint Joseph in the altarpiece of the Holy Family now in the Pitti Palace, Florence. This work was commissioned directly from Sarto by Zanobi Bracci in about 1523. The drawing shows the head of Saint Joseph in a startlingly realized study fully developed in a subtle combination of black and red chalk, with a secondary drawing below it in which Sarto revisits the subject with Saint Joseph’s eyes open. The verso shows two studies of legs in red chalk, an unpublished addition to Sarto’s works which was unknown save for a misleading reference in an 18th century footnote. The first known owner of the drawing was the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari who was one of Sarto’s pupils. Vasari was the first ‘modern’ collector of drawings, and is most famous for his Lives of the Artists, perhaps the earliest work of modern Art History and Criticism. He assembled a collection of drawings by notable artists from the 14th Century to his own time and arranged them in albums with distinctive decorative frames drawn around the mounts, as can be seen in the Head of Saint Joseph. Throughout the Lives of the Artists Vasari refers back to his own collection of drawings, often using it is a source of comparative information. (Bron: de dagelijkse nieuwsbrief van
Dit ‘Hoofd van een jonge man’, heb ik gevonden op de volgende web site 
Argusvlinder 