by Jon Lackman | 3 April 2008 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
In the February 2008 issue of The Burlington Magazine, Xander van Eck reviews Eric Jan Sluijter’s Rembrandt and the Female Nude:
… the scope of [Rembrandt's] genius was such that it still yields genuinely new research, providing that valid questions are asked. Eric Jan Sluijter has done just that in Rembrandt and the Female Nude, the first full-length study on the subject … [he makes a] convincing argument that Rembrandt’s radical realism must be seen in the context of the debate on disegno and colore (rather than the ephemeral categories of classicism and anti-classicism) … we realise that it was one of his main ambitions to surpass Titian as a colourist … just by reading about [Titian's art], studying prints and looking at a few, mostly second-rate paintings. One comes to think that it may have been the very remoteness from the source that allowed for such spectacular creativity … [this book] opens a whole new field of scholarly discussion, it augments our knowledge of the theme and it offers genuinely new insights in what was important for Rembrandt as an artist. One cannot ask for much more in a book.
