Volume 54, Number 15 · October 11, 2007
The Golden Age at Its Best
By Julian Bell
Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals
Catalog of the exhibition by Rudi Ekkart and Quentin Buvelot
an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, June 27–September 16, 2007, and the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, October 13, 2007–January 13, 2008.
Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis/National Gallery/Waanders, 280 pp., £30.00; £19.95 (paper)
The Rembrandt Book
by Gary Schwartz
Abrams, 384 pp., $65.00
Rembrandt's Nose: Of Flesh and Spirit in the Master's Portraits
by Michael Taylor
Distributed Art Publishers, 167 pp., $27.50
Abraham Casteleijn, a middle-aged newspaper publisher, holds up his right hand as if he might address us. But the roll of his eyes and his slack-shouldered slouch on the dining chair deprive the gesture of any energy. It resolves into a fond, resigned welcome, inviting us into the urbane muddle of his Haarlem mansion: his globe, the Turkish rug on his table, his hat slapped down on a loose stack of bound folios, a paper or two—perhaps some 1663 copy of the Weeckelycke Courante van Europa—dangling beneath them. The bust of a long-dead local worthy looms over his shoulder, po-faced, rectitudinous, dour. It sets a note of severity that Abraham and his wife Margarieta dutifully observe in their garb of black satin—good, serious folk, adherents to the Mennonite confession.
Review, 4682 words
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