Simple and profound, this is what I can say about most of Rembrandt's work. Everything is in paint itself. Great spirits do great things. How many masterpieces in Western culture are close to “image pure” - the crystal, clear picture of the world? I don't know, but Rembrandt's work touched me deeply and it occupies the same place in visual art, as J.S.Bach in music. To me he was the man, who no longer was deceived by appearance, but saw the real.

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn was born on July 15, 1606 in Leiden, Netherlands. His father, Harman Gerritszoon van Rijn, was a miller and his mother, Neetlje van Suytbroeck, was a baker's daughter. They were pretty wealthy and belonged to the upper middle class. They had nine children and Rembrandt was the sixth one. He was sent to a Latin school and after it he was admitted to the University. A few months later he resigned from academic learning and became an apprentice of the local painter - Jacob van Swanenburgh. ² He studied with him around three years and thereafter was sent to Amsterdam to study with Pieter Lastman, who visited Italy and admired Elsheimer and Caravaggio. Lastman himself became a successful painter. In juxtaposition with Swanenburgh, he made an impression on young Rembrandt, particularly influencing his early paintings. Already in 1625, at the age of nineteen, Rembrandt was back in Laiden working together with his peer, Jan Lievens, as an independent painter. ³

His strong individuality and talent was noticeable almost from the very beginning of his career. Together with Jan Lievens they lacked interest in going to “artists Mecca” - Italy, back then, a standard for Dutch artists. They were very much rooted in their own culture. and answered to the secretary of the Prince of Orange, Constantijn Huygens; “that they 'did not want to squander their time in the bloom of their years traveling to foreign lands'.” ⁴ Rembrandt's self-confidence and reflective nature provoked him to use, as his models, people from his everyday environment and through them search the archetypical depths of human psyche.

Rembrandt's work shares the features of a genius - simplicity tied together with unusual psychological depth. Homogeneity of his paintings, the deep insight into the human soul, the thought concentrated on the human and the world of order - ethical and moral, made his work the common wealth of our culture. The magic of his paintings is recalling the world of antiquity with its human dignity and mystery of pure existence. These are things to be found dwelling in the majestic sunsets, twilight of the coming evening and the eyes of beloved ones. Some of his religious scenes are placed in the Gothic setting reinforcing the idea of the nostalgic past.

His approach, that “one should be guided only by Nature and no other rules” ⁵, is very well rooted. Influence of Renaissance art on Rembrandt and his ties with tradition is obvious and explored by Kenneth Clark in the book ‘Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance’. His rebellious unconventional treatment of standard subjects in the light of the Baroque time, has something from this universal tradition in art - to be against tradition, so to speak, a constant search for freshness. To be guided by Nature, is to paint, what you see. In this context, I can say that Rembrandt did not fail - he looked very deep into human eyes avoiding psychological simplification. One thing which struck me looking through his self portraits was very deeply felt presence. I couldn't avoid the feeling of being observed while observing myself. It was the magic of his paintings that made a trick similar to a story from the 1991 French movie directed by Alain Corneou "All The Mornings of The World" with Gerard and Guilluame Depardieu. In the movie a painter resurrected through his work a woman. The whole film is one big metaphor about art and while looking it, I would think about Rembrandt and Caravaggio.

Rembrandt evidently depicts spiritual mystery, marginal for the prosperous, materialistic mind - a man seduced by "the future" technological, mechanical and financial advances, who forgets about his own soul. This situation is well captured in still lives in the spirit of Northern Mannerism with minimal religious scenes in the background seen through some "goodies" or a stall of meat as in the painting by Pieter Aertsen from 1551 The Meat Stall - shortly to say - "a sausage from Hamtramck and big refrigerator". Rembrandt's mysticism is always within borders of human experience avoiding psychedelic symbolism replaced in his case by effects of his technique to elevate visual expression into a higher level. In his painting Philosopher Meditating, the rich symbolism of different elements is interacting with calmness of the inner contemplative life. The painting is an expression of a very peculiar mood - a deep thoughtful moment. The stairways, mysterious silhouettes, the fire and daily light - are depicted with precision and deep intuition, unusual x-ray - chiaroscuro of the mind. The balance between material reality and suggested metaphor, in case of Rembrandt, achieved its fulfillment. He has been noticed by contemporary artists.

To illustrate his immediate influence on art, we can look at the quite magical painting A Man seated reading at a Table in a Lofty Room not so long ago subscribed to Rembrandt, but executed by his contemporary follower, thus classified as a school of Rembrandt. In this painting, the vanishing silhouette of the human figure is captured in a space of the lofty room, which in this case, could be a metaphor of the philosopher's mind and metaphysical space itself - the inner space of human mind and soul.

Until relatively recently attributed to Rembrandt, this work is now thought to be a work of an early Rembrandt's follower. The artist has imitated the style of Rembrandt's early years (1625-31) when he worked in his native Leyden, the style characterized by the precise treatment of detail and strong contrasts between light and dark. Rembrandt painted this sort of subjects in his early years in Leyden. Nevertheless, the painting is significantly different in composition and technique from Rembrandt's work of that period. The draughtsmanship is considered to be too heavy-handed and the volumes too ill-defined for the painting to be by Rembrandt, although we are still moving in a very subjective world of opinions. The picture was probably painted in Leyden in the late 1620s. ⁶

Rembrandt's technical skill, his thick slavishly added impasto in cooperation with varnish, created the unified surface of fluid light, in which the subject is gently fusing with the background. It's an element of his skill, which we can sense almost from the beginning of his career and already visible in his self-portrait from 1629, but fully developed in later years.

The feeling of human warmth emanating out of his work in juxtaposition with Rembrandt's many personal losses of his most loved ones, is only amplifying his personal growth in relation to the divine. The end of his life he spent in alienation, which could be, as Gary Schwartz suggested, due to his tough and bitter character or and as well - a chosen solitude of the man who is close to his inner perfection. As in his youth, he prized honor in relationships, so in his later days he prized personal freedom more then anything else. He spent his last years with his concubine, Henrickje's daughter - Cornelia. He died, unnoticed by the society, on October 4, in 1669. ⁷ His renouncement of social applause in later years might be partially due to his personal search and wanderings on the canvas, which did not fit into a rather sweet and more entertaining role of the painting in the late seventeenth century. Although, he was always admired even when his popularity was fading away, later he was criticized for his classicism and, in particular, for his technique - muddy impasto.

Throughout Rembrandt's career we can distinct few periods: Leyden (1625-1631), The first Amsterdam Period (1631-1642), the second (1642-1650) and the third (1650-1669). The turning point in Rembrandt's style occurred around 1642 - the year of his wife Saskia death. It was also the year of his big project - the painting Night Watch. ⁸The Jewish Bride from 1668 is the expression of Rembrandt's last period. First and always the most significant question: what does he want to say or to show?

Particularly, in the case of Rembrandt the question seems to be important. In a critical acrobatic "what the author wants to communicate", is defused sometimes in colorful stories from the given period. For me, The Jewish Bride, is the painting about love and care, done with such a eloquence and feeling, that one can sense a veil of silence slowly flaying on the viewer face. Silence, in this case, is the most appropriate word - silence of the moment and moment of the silence. We can see it in a flash of a second or not to see it at all. At the end of his life Rembrandt summarized his worldly existence, the old man, as we can see him in his last self-portrait from 1669. His eyes fixed on us are reveling and guarding at the same time, the richness of his inner world. Perhaps, he did the subject of lovers, because it was important in his own development as a highly conscious man, who was exposed into pleasures and miseries of the soul journey. The essence of the painting is the man and women in love, which becomes more real, longer we look. Their eyes are gazing inside, as if looking each other through themselves. It is subconscious search for a place, where the most intense sorrow of impermanence is meeting with the ecstasy of immortality. After all, what really is life about? In Kenneth Clark's words:

These are two individual souls, who nonetheless embody certain universal and enduring truths that we need each other, that we can achieve unity only through tenderness, and that the protection of one human being by another is solemn responsibility. ⁹

The striking feature of this painting is virtuosity of colors done in oil on canvas, 122.5 cm x 166.5 cm. Dominating gold, warm red surrounded by earthly browns and greens creates a feeling of warmth and intimacy. Red - the color of emotion with its royal and sensual connotation here is in play with gold and sepia - vibrating warmth and underlying some aspects of human relation. The figures are in gentle light and themselves are glowing with inner light of subtlety. The texture in thick impasto is executed with the palette knife and brush. The layers of colors indicate Rembrandt's search for expression - for this particular expression not the other. His technique suggests the fusion of conscious and accidental and we can look it as a sign of his everlasting creativity. This work, with its emotional appeal and content, in its prime is a matter of feelings. The subject of lovers is penetrating not only all religious scriptures, but art as well and overall. During High Renaissance it was probably Giorgione who incorporated this fashionable loving embrace into the artist's themes, particularly very much present in Venetian art. ¹⁰

There were different suggestions about the subject. The title The Jewish Bride was given in 1825, long time after Rembrandt and it does not mean that a couple from the painting is Jewish. ¹¹ The composition of this painting resembles earlier work done by such artists as Giorgione, Hugo van der Goes, Holbein and Rembrandt's contemporary Dirck Santvoort, all of them illustrating the Old Testament story of Jacob and Rachel. ¹² The figures are contained within a shape of Renaissance triangle. The most suggestive direct influence is from Raphael composition in the Loggia of the Vatican Isaac and Rebecca Spied upon by King Abimelach, although, if this is the case, the subject is simplified excluding the King. Other suggestion taken from Dutch contemporary theme would point out couples like Esther and Ahasuerus, Tobias and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, or Ruth and Boaz. ¹³

Another proposition, although not very convincing, was Rembrandt's son Titus and his freshly married wife, Magdalena van Loo or the Jewish poet, Miguel de Barrios with his wife. The most recent theory by Gary Schwartz indicates as the subject, painter's contemporary, heroes of the ‘soap opera’ or characters from Dutch rouges' play Cyrus and Aspasia.¹⁴ If this is the case, we can admire Rembrandt's ability to transform banal and gross into subtle. Of course in the embracing gesture of the man ‘is reflected what might be called a patriarchal conception of bridal relationship in which the man becomes the responsible owner of the woman and cherishes her as his possession.’ ¹⁵ Still, it was in the context of his time with a strong accent on the positive side of human relation.

Rembrandt's poetic contribution to visual art is unique and unquestionable. It does not need as much of academic defending as sensitive viewers. Recent exploration of his life and character in a more critical light presents him as a person distasteful, egocentric and untrustworthy. It is difficult to argue in such subtle matters, particularly that there is no evidence and documents to support this point of view. More often than not, people who are outstanding and with better sense of reality are isolated by common ignorance and fear of the rest. In context of his work: his paintings, drawings and etchings, considering the hours he spent on his art, it would be good guess, that he went beyond conventions, renouncing goods and fame of freshly prosperous Dutch society, in order to spent more time with himself and people that he cared about. His work is a proof of humankind's genus, inspiring till today our thinking, uplifting our minds and souls into the quiet contemplation of human values done in a spirit, called by Matthew Arnold, “high seriousness” in “a tradition of monumental religious art.”