Volume 14, Number 5 · March 12, 1970
Rembrandt Now
By Ernst Gombrich
Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings
by Abraham Bredius, 3rd edition revised by Horst Gerson
Phaidon, 612, 664 illustrations pp., $20.00
Rembrandt Paintings
by Horst Gerson
Reynal, 527, 600 illustrations, 80 color pages pp., $39.95
Rembrandt
by Joseph-Emile Muller, translated by Brian Hooley
Abrams, 272, 134 illustrations, 58 in color pp., $7.50
Rembrandt: Life and Work
by Jakob Rosenberg
Phaidon, 386, 283 illustrations pp., $4.95 (paper)
Rembrandt As An Etcher
by Christopher White
Pennsylvania State University, 2 vols, 531, 348 illustrations pp., $29.95
Rembrandt
by Michael Kitson
Phaidon, 24, 50 color plates pp., $5.95
Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time
by Bob Haak, translated by Elizabeth Willems Treeman
Abrams, 348, 612 illustrations, 109 in color pp., $35.00
Rembrandt in Amsterdam
by R.H. Fuchs, translated by Patricia Wardle, translated by Alan Griffiths
New York Graphic Society, 162, 121 illustrations pp., $9.50
Rembrandt's "Aristotle" and Other Rembrandt Studies
by Julius Held
Princeton, 224, 132 illustrations, 3 color plates pp., $10.00
There are any number of good reasons for remembering Rembrandt, but certainly one which is rather irrelevant—the fact that we have ten fingers on our hands and therefore regard centenaries as round numbers. Since Rembrandt died at the age of sixty-three, an undischarged bankrupt, on October 4, 1669, the calender indicated last year that exhibitions had to be mounted and books published, not to speak of articles and radio talks asking the mock-soleman question 'How do we stand with respect to Rembrandt today?' How indeed? How do we stand with respect to the Psalms, to Chartres Cathedral? Such works are more or less protected by anonymity from the dangerous institution of centenaries which not only tend to create a revulsion by surfeit but also are counterproductive of scholarship. The normal course of research depends on continuous argument; the ideas and suggestions advanced by one scholar are accepted or rejected by the next, and we all hope that in this sifting process we get a little closer to the truth. But it is rare, in the nature of things, that publications which appear in one given year can take notice of each other, and so the result is less like a dialogue than like a Babel of voices.
Review, 6501 words
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