Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young PeopleBacon, Mary Schell Hoke
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Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People
Bacon, Mary Schell Hoke
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painters -- Juvenile literature; Painting -- Juvenile literature
Rembrandt's home, where he and Saskia were so happy, is still to be
seen on a quay of the River Amstel. It is a house of brick and cut
stone, four stories high. The vestibule used to have a flag-stone
pavement covered with fir-wood. There were also "black-cushioned,
Spanish chairs for those who wait," and all about were twenty-four
busts and paintings. There was an ante-chamber, very large, with seven
Spanish chairs covered with green velvet, and a walnut table covered
with "a Tournay cloth"; there was a mirror with an ebony frame, and
near by a marble wine-cooler. Upon the wall of this _salon_ were
thirty-nine pictures and most of them had beautiful frames. "There
were religious scenes, landscapes, architectural sketches, works of
Pinas, Brouwer, Lucas van Leyden, and other Dutch masters; sixteen
pictures by Rembrandt; and costly paintings by Palma Vecchio, Bassano,
and Raphael."
In the next room was a real art museum, containing splendid pictures,
an oaken press and other things which suggest that this was the
workroom where Rembrandt's etchings were made and printed.
In the drawing-room was a huge mirror, a great oaken table covered
with a rich embroidered cloth, "six chairs with blue coverings, a bed
with blue hangings, a cedar wardrobe, and a chest of the same wood."
The walls were literally covered with pictures, among which was a
Raphael.
Above was a sort of museum and Rembrandt's studio. There was rare
glass from Venice, busts, sketches, paintings, cloths, weapons,
armour, plants, stuffed birds and shells, fans, and books and
globes. In short, this was a most wonderful house and no other
interior can we reconstruct as we can this, because no other such
detailed inventory can be found of a great man's effects as that from
which these notes are taken: a legal inventory made in 1656, long
after Saskia had died and possibly at a time when Rembrandt wished to
close his doors forever and forget the scenes in which he had been so
happy.
Holland being truly a Protestant country, its artists have given us no
great Madonna pictures, although they painted loving, happy Dutch
mothers and little babes, but on the whole their subjects are quite
different from those of the painters of Italy, France, and Spain.
Rembrandt's studio was different from any other. When he first began
to work independently and to have pupils, he fitted it up with many
little cells, properly lighted, so that each student might work alone,
as he knew far better work could be done in that way. It is said that
his pictures of beggars would, by themselves, fill a gallery. He had a
kindly sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, and tramps knew this, so
that they swarmed about his studio doors, trying to get sittings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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