Rembrandt's Light review – glorious art needs no gimmicks

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
In imagining the artist as a cinematographer, this exhibition misses the bigger picture – and in any case, his love of murk would make him a terrible filmmaker

If Rembrandt were alive today, claims Dulwich Picture Gallery, he’d be a cinematographer. It’s a very precise posthumous career choice. Why not a director, special effects wizard, installation artist … or even painter? But this inventive exhibition, which marks the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death, is certain he’d be photographing films. It has even brought in Peter Suschitzky, cinematographer of The Empire Strikes Back, to help craft the show in a way that brings out the great artist’s genius for telling stories with light.

I can’t help thinking that, as a cinematographer, Rembrandt would annoy audiences hugely. When the Game of Thrones makers dared to light a nocturnal battle scene as it might look in a world without electric light, many viewers expressed outrage. I liked it, not least because it was reminiscent of Rembrandt – you won’t find a more mysterious night than the one that engulfs the people hunched around a campfire in his wonderful Landscape With the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. What would those complainants make of a scene in which a maester sat reading in an inky-black room, as a philosopher does here? Or an elderly couple all but disappearing in the gloom of a chamber, lit just by a dwindling fire? These are typical of the extreme lighting effects that Rembrandt uses in this exhibition, in sublime paintings and prints lent from such great collections as the Louvre and Rijksmuseum.

At Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, from 4 October until 2 February.

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