A brilliant show of the 17th-century Dutch painter’s later works has opened at London’s National Gallery. The beautiful pictures may partially dispel what an awful man Rembrandt seemed to be.
I’ve always been fairly sure I wouldn’t have much liked Rembrandt van Rijn. Greedy, lascivious and a proper love rat with a nasty cruel streak, the 17th century Dutch painter comes across in accounts as a thoroughly unpleasant sort: when a discarded mistress sued him for what she considered a breach of marriage contract, he had her committed to a hideous house of correction, and then tried to have her sent back again when the poor woman finally got out.
But as London’s National Gallery opens its new exhibition Rembrandt: The Late Works, it becomes almost impossible to reconcile this monster with the master of such delicately expressive, psychologically acute, intensely humane paintings as these.
There has never been a show like this before, and if you are in London before it closes on January 18 next year, try to
see it.
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