Synopses & Reviews
Since the second half of the last century art historians, realizing that the image of Rembrandts work had become blurred with time, have attempted to redefine the artists significance both as a source of inspiration to other artists and as a great artist in his own right. In order to carry on the work started by previous generations, a group of leading Dutch art historians from the university and museum world joined forces in the late 1960s in order to study afresh the paintings usually ascribed to the artist. The researchers came together in the Rembrandt Research Project which was established to provide the art world with a new standard reference work which would serve the community of art historians for the nearby and long future. They examined the originals of all works attributed to Rembrandt taking full advantage of todays sophisticated techniques including radiography, neutron activation autoradiography, dendrochronology and paint sample analysis thereby gaining valuable insight into the genesis and condition of the paintings. The result of this meticulous research is laid down chronologically in the following Volumes: A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, Volume I, which deals with works from Rembrandts early years in Leiden(1629-1631), published in 1982.THIS