A visit to El Prado - November 2008
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 – 1669)
We will visit an exhibition of his works at El Prado, Madrid on Saturday, November 8.
Here are the arrangements:
- Rooms A and B of the Jerónimos building.
- Saturday, November 8. We will meet at the entrance to the exhibition as from 11.45 for an 12.00 start.
- The visit will finish around 13.30 and it will be in English! Don't worry about English levels for anyone you want to invite. We can all help with translation.
- Early lunch/snack in the Cafe Prado to mix and talk.
- More specific details later by email.
Please let me know by email before Thursday, October 30, 18.00 if you will be coming.
Rembrandt was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.
Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardship. Yet his drawings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high and for twenty years he taught nearly every important Dutch painter. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. The self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the complete sincerity.
In both painting and printmaking he exhibited a complete knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of the Jewish population of Amsterdam. Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization."
This is an extract from the wikipedia entry for Rembrandt.
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