Word: offing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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As his title suggests, Schama finds special messages in the eyes of Rembrandt's subjects. He notes that in art education painters were taught to put special care into their depiction of the whites of eyes, yet in many of Rembrandt's works-Schama points to "The Artist in his...
In his analysis of "Balaam and the Ass" (1626), for example, Schama notes how Balaam's eyes differ from previous depictions in other portraits. In the story from the book of Numbers, Balaam's donkey sees an angel and goes berserk. Previous painters, following the Dutch master van Mander's...
And then there are Balaam's eyes. Rembrandt's eyes. Lastman has followed the van Mander prescription. The prophet is amazed to hear his donkey speak. Follow the stage direction. Make his eyes pop out with astonishment. Give the customers dilated pupils, white sclera, and lots of it. With a...
Most of all, Schama's book is a meditative, entranced attempt to get behind the faces we see in Rembrandt's self-portraits. Schama reads Rembrandt's self-portraits in various costumes-as a merchant, as a soldier, for example-as indications of his elusiveness, as if each portrait were...
Schama is particularly careful, sometimes even painfully self-conscious, of the use of the term "genius"-"the G-word," as he calls it-although Schama does say that we "intuitively" call Rembrandt a genius. Nevertheless, Schama clearly wishes his book to be a tribute to Rembrandt. He makes no claim...