false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174440845m/400343.jpg 400343 9 The great 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn left us so many arresting self-portraits, painted at every stage in his eventful life, that his distinctive face and bearing are a familiar part of the 20th-century cultural landscape, a recognisable presence in galleries across Europe and North America. Nonetheless, the artist himself remains tantalisingly an enigma. A notoriously difficult man and an inveterate risk-taker in life and art, Rembrandt's aspirations to a grandiose Amsterdam lifestyle in the heyday of his popularity as a painter of portraits and large-scale historical works bankrupted him and he died in relative poverty. His personal effects and his treasured collection of paintings and natural rarities were sold off and dispersed, leaving the historian with a tantalisingly scant body of fragmentary records around which to build a convincing biography. <p>In <I>Rembrandt's Eyes</I> Simon Schama--the leading historical craftsman of our era, with a career-long commitment to Dutch history--succeeds with consummate skill in bringing the heroic painter of such masterpieces as <I>The Night Watch</I> and <I>Portrait of Jan Six</I> vividly to life again. Returning to the bustling Dutch world with which he first made his reputation in his bestselling <I>The Embarrassment of Riches</I> (1987), Schama recreates Rembrandt's life and times with all the verve and panache of a historical novelist, whilst never for an instant losing his scrupulous grip on recorded fact and detail. The telling surviving fragments of archival information about Rembrandt's personal and professional history are embedded skilfully in a richer and denser tapestry of the commercial whirl and political hurly-burly of the 17th-century Low Countries--a divided territory, split between the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the contested powers of the Spanish Habsburgs and the Dutch Republic--with the tentacles of the tale reaching into the most unexpected shadowy corners of European love and war, aspiration and intrigue.<p><I>Rembrandt's Eyes</I> is, in fact, two biographies for the price of one. From the outset Schama contrasts the life of Rembrandt with that of his older, equally artistically talented, countryman Peter Paul Rubens, whose meteoric rise and sustained success as a society painter forms a revealing contrast with Rembrandt's unhappier relationship with fame and fortune. The comparison is a telling one. Where Rubens furnishes the wealthy and powerful with glorious reflections of and visual foils for their social and political aspirations and glory, Rembrandt can never resist testing the envelope of taste and stylistic acceptability. His challenge to his clients to rise to embrace the shock of his painterly experiments with technique, texture and composition, ultimately produced his downfall. The Amsterdam Town Council took down his <I>The Oath-swearing of Claudius Civilis</I>, rolled it up and returned his masterpiece to him, to be cut-down in an attempt to sell it to a suitable buyer.<p> This is a gorgeous book to own, too. <I>Rembrandt's Eyes</I> is printed on heavy, high-gloss paper, lavishly illustrated throughout in full colour, with double-page colour spreads of the most memorable of Rembrandt's works, which take one's breath away as one turns the page. But above all, this is narrative history at its very best, a page-turner and an adventure story, which will make the reader laugh and cry by turns, in the time-honoured tradition of masterly writing. --<I>Lisa Jardine</I> 490764 25 10 1999 Rembrandt's Eyes total:59|5:26|4:20|3:13|2:0|1:0| 59 249 128 10 5 1 false false Wed Jul 30 12:45:12 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 30 12:46:08 -0700 2008
Well written and entertaining as well as informative.]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jan 12 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 04 17:03:33 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 12 07:09:28 -0800 2009
It's undoubtedly a great book, but a bit of a d...more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jul 17 10:47:16 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 10:55:28 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Dec 30 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 10 18:28:25 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 18:32:31 -0800 2009 5 1 false false Thu May 14 10:59:37 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 11:04:07 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat Dec 06 11:50:18 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 06 11:51:04 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Mon Sep 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 11:24:16 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 07 03:17:15 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun Apr 13 19:02:39 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 13 19:03:47 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Tue Feb 24 12:50:08 -0800 2009 Sun Sep 21 08:00:56 -0700 2008 Tue Feb 24 12:50:08 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jul 03 18:44:03 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 18:44:14 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Nov 20 19:43:54 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 20 19:58:06 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Sun Nov 08 11:56:52 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 08 11:56:52 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Mon Nov 02 07:46:18 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 02 07:46:18 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Sat Oct 31 08:18:48 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 31 08:18:48 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Oct 12 01:02:58 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 01:02:58 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Oct 06 10:15:44 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 10:15:44 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Sep 30 11:25:58 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 30 11:25:58 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Tue Sep 08 20:19:45 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 08 20:19:52 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Fri Aug 21 13:17:17 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 21 13:17:17 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Thu Aug 20 11:06:20 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 20 11:06:20 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=400343