People soon discover that I love art and architecture, and so a question you get asked is "Who's your favourite artist?" Well I've got a small bunch that would include Velazquez, Titian, Cezanne, Vermeer plus one or two more I expect. But in a special place is Rembrandt. Favourite? Maybe so.
I just watched a gem of a little 30 minutes BBC 4 documentary with Simon Scharma on "The Young Rembrandt". This is based on an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that was cut short by the current epidemic. We are not this time distracted by Scharma's sometimes off-putting slightly twitchy face. The whole attention is on the paintings and etchings, at which we gaze as he unpacks them for us. Rembrandt has the ability to bring a tear to my eye, so astonishing and unflinching is his penetration of our human condition.
In 2013 I spent a holiday in and around Amsterdam, which I found much improved from my previous visit in the sordid 70s. They have kind of reimagined his house, but I found it a bit cold, dead. I learnt more of his story, especially about his descent into sadness at the end. Here lived and painted one of the most brilliant depictors of what it means to be alive, to be human, who has ever lived.
I wanted to find out more. But really it's all there in the paintings. And with Scharma to guide us this evening, I was in good hands. Catch it on iPlayer. "Museums in Quarantine" Series 1: 2 Rembrandt.
This his father
Here is Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem
and here The Good Samaritan
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