L'Art en Question 5 Rembrandt - Le Retour du Fils prodigue (St-Pétersbourg)

Art...
ArtSleuth
A young man
An old one
Lookers-on
A picture by Rembrandt
A touching reunion?
Certainly, but something more too.
This is the New Testament story of the prodigal son,
who turns his back on his family,
squanders his inheritance on women and wine,
ends as a starving, penniless swineherd,
and returns to his father
… who, unbelievably, welcomes him with open arms
and kills the fatted calf to welcome him ...
.... to the jealous anger of his faithful, hardworking older son.
A strange idea of justice!
Does late repentance
wipe out betrayal and debauchery?
Does it outweigh a life of virtue?
The point here is that divine justice has its own criteria:
“There shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just” .
But Rembrandt
seems to be deliberately obscuring the meaning of the story - and the picture.
no religious symbolism, no divine presence.
Why not?
Because the connection with God is clearly implied?
Or because Rembrandt himself wants to add another meaning?
Title: Rembrandt – The Return of the Prodigal Son
The hidden side of strength
Part 1. The art of concealment
How much of the story is actually left?
First of all, the son, with his
• bare feet and worn shoes
• legs showing through tattered clothing
• cord used as belt
• shaven head and reddened scalp
• emaciated face and swollen eyelids,
His kneeling posture reflects his shame and degradation.
His body is the body of a martyr.
And then the father:
• A man both powerful and versed in the ways of the world.
Vivid highlights
on his hair and beard
A man both wise and self-possessed: unspeaking,
one eye on his son, the other lost in thought.
A man both wealthy and loving: his mantle radiates warmth,
surrounds the son’s face with a red halo,
follows the line of his head.
His hands comfort and heal
- one delicate and pale,
the other stronger and darker.
The father literally enfolds his son.
The actors in this little scene carry the whole story!
The bystanders seem bit-players by comparison!
The older son, wearing the same red coat
The two servants in the sculpted doorway
The woman in the background, with her red pendant
Anything strange about the picture?
Let’s look at a more conventional treatment:
Father and son are looking at each other,
the servants are bringing out the clothes,
shoes and ring called for by the father
while the calf is led gaily to the slaughter
Religious symbols are everywhere:
the sacrifice recalls that of Christ,
the white dog stands for purity and faith.
Everything, including the message, is clear…
Thirty years earlier, Rembrandt himself had followed the same line:
In the background, clothes are being produced, a shutter is being opened
His use of profile in the foreground clarifies the scene:
a shoe has been shed, the stick dropped
the older brother is absent
the son’s body is so ravaged,
his face so wretched,
that he almost seems to deserve his father’s pardon.
Everything matches the letter of the bible story
- but what about the spirit?
The later version has no “after”:
the figures seem bemused,
no action is suggested.
As for “before”,
this sketchy bas-relief is all we get.
It conflates debauchery with downfall:
the prodigal son sports a sword and plays the flute,
while his fate is foreshadowed by
the pigs at his feet.
With his back to the viewer,
neither his misery nor his remorse are visible:
the father’s forgiveness exists in a vacuum.
Rembrandt pares the story down, and eliminates the kind of easy sentiment
which might otherwise make it seem banal...
...
and then goes even further by involving us, the viewers:
First, he makes us identify with the son,
whose feet are the first thing we see,
and whose position we share
Secondly, he prompts uncomfortable questions:
[to be translated]
would we have been generous, like the father
- or have stayed resentfully in the background,
like the older son?
But why is he so anxious to involve us in a picture
which was not intended for a church,
and was still in his studio when he died?
Part 2. The painter as prodigal
Rembrandt had painted his first version of the parable 28 years earlier -
the conventional orgy.
Expensively dressed,
brandishing a glass,
in a richly furnished brothel,
with a harlot on his knee,
the prodigal son invites us to savour the pleasures of the flesh ...
… including this peacock, symbol of opulence and vanity!
Here, Rembrandt follows a familiar Dutch convention:
using the biblical scene as pretext, he ostensibly condemns the sins of the flesh
- while evoking them in lip-smacking detail.
But the picture acquires a new dimension…
… once we realise that it is a self-portrait.
Even if this is nothing new …
other painters portray themselves in taverns…
And Dürer draws himself surrounded by pigs…
… Rembrandt gives the harlot the features of Saskia van Uylenburgh,
his own wife!
In fact, the picture can be seen as an ironic image of his new status:
Saskia, whom he shows off proudly,
is immensely rich, and marrying her has earned him the right to work in Amsterdam
… where commissions pour in,
… he acquires a fine house in a fashionable neighbourhood…
… and picture follows picture. [à réviser : il réalise une collection d'art personnelle]
Rembrandt’s self-portrait as prodigal son
acknowledges his own extravagance,
while making Saskia - slightly behind him, looking calmly at the viewer - the moderating force in the partnership.
But tragedy lies ahead…
Saskia dies in 1642.
Sixteen years later, Rembrandt is ruined,
his house and possessions have been sold,
and the birth of an illegitimate child to his new partner
has tarnished his private reputation.
The commissions dry up and,
when Hendrickje dies in 1663,…
… the parallel with the prodigal son is obvious:
alone, ruined, shunned by the church,
Rembrandt longs to rejoin the Christian community
and make his peace with God.
His Protestant faith
dictates that he open his heart to God, but ask for nothing:
God alone, in his infinite freedom, will grant him grace
or withhold it.
Part 3. The power of the unseen
But the picture’s fame today
is not simply due to Rembrandt’s identifying with the prodigal son.
In the prosperous Dutch Republic,
the wealthy burghers determine what sells.
Their walls are covered with pictures, and they want religious scenes to fit in …
… and have “real life” resonance,
which speaks directly to them.
Earlier artists have approached bible stories in two ways,
but Rembrandt does something new.
First strategy: using perspective
to link the story with the present.
Lucas van Leyden puts his “Christ Presented to the People” in a modern urban setting,
with a crowd in the foreground.
Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer both hide
biblical scenes - the flight into Egypt, and the prodigal son
- behind well-stocked market stalls.
And Brueghel presents his main subjects - Christ carrying the cross, St. Paul
- as details in crowd scenes.
The benefits are obvious: viewers are drawn into the picture,
They have to make sense of it,
think about it,
and then reinterpret the things they first noticed
in the light of a bible story.
Better still, a “worldly” setting
makes that story seem “truer”.
...
Rembrandt has studied these perspective effects and absorbed them,
but moves closer to his subject than van Leyden, and adopts a more head-on viewpoint,
and eventually substitutes strange empty spaces
for the crowd in the centre.
Each of the two versions is theatrical in its own way:
one has the epic vitality of the medieval stage,
the other suggests a moment mysteriously suspended in time.
The Prodigal Son is in the second category, with:
perspective lines converging on both father and son,
the dark and gaping doorway,
the off-centre positioning of the main figures,
faces which cannot be identified with certainty.
Second strategy: using extreme theatrical effects to achieve immediate impact.
This is Caravaggio’s method,
and Rembrandt learns from it:
few figures
harsh, spot-type lighting
main figures in the front foreground, where the viewer picks them out at once.
His areas of darkness are theatrically effective in two ways:
They focus our attention by simplifying the composition
They draw us into the picture by suggesting a world
which our imagination can enter and fill.
Next episode: Holbein's Ambassadors
Self-love or more?
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Voiceover
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Postproduction (extra) anbd sound recording
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Special thanks
English subtitles: Vincent Nash
A CED production