There has been no shortage of Rembrandt exhibitions in recent years.

In the context of the 350th anniversary of his death in 2019, Amsterdam was not the only country with a huge retrospective.

Does a show really have to be in Frankfurt now?

The exhibition at the Städel, however, starts much earlier and differently than the previous ones: How did Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, born in Leiden in 1606, become that unique artist who, unusually, only traded by his first name from 1633?

So how did it develop into this unmistakable trademark, the new German "branding"?

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the features section.

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The Städel examines the rocket-like rise of the artist from 1630 and illuminates the conditions of the final breakthrough against strong competitors up to the middle of the decade after 1650.

In terms of the number of photo proofs for the basic thesis, the exhibition can compete with the major anniversary shows: sixty, with this biographical topic necessarily almost all of Rembrandt's own works, including a number of seldom seen works from the cooperating National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Washington and Los Angeles , are compared with another eighty pictures from the competition at the time.

Real women with real feelings

Economically, it is easy to see why becoming a brand was inevitable for Rembrandt and his contemporaries: The northern Netherlands were not only the most important in their “golden age” of the seventeenth century, which was far less golden for the donors of immense wealth Trading center in Europe; they were also the largest art market in the world. An average of seventy thousand pictures a year were produced in picture factories in the manageable country and sold worldwide - of course to their own fairytale rich West and East Indian colonial rulers. To stand out among this gigantic offer,Artists had to do something special, which in the sales galleries of the time hung close to each other in eight rows and - as a particularly interesting picture of the exhibition shows - was also sold to euphoric brokers right next to the exit of the Amsterdam stock exchange building.

What distinguishes Rembrandt from today's riot brothers of branding such as Jeff Koons or Damian Hirst is first and foremost love: with absolute devotion he depicts and flatters the women in his pictures so credibly that the upper-class Amsterdam women, who are equally decisive when buying a purchase Chapter "Top selection for discerning customers" charmed) become a driving force in picture sales. All the strong Delilas, who were not defamed as witches by Rembrandt (in the grandiose Frankfurt "Blendung Simsons" with real horror), the faces of his partners Saskia van Uylenburgh and Hendrickje Stoffels, especially the numerous Rebeccas, Saras ( the intimate "Sara / Hendrickje expects Tobias" from Edinburgh's National Gallery),Judiths and Rahels, they are in great demand because they are the familiar faces of real women.

As is well known, Rembrandt has an equally great passion for fabrics and robes, which he throws enthusiastically on the canvas with flowing contours and inner lines in flowing colors - and is lucky with that: What many other artists would not have been or would not have been accepted by many other artists by the Calvinist pea-counting clients as blurry sloppiness It would have been agonizingly often to be improved if Rembrandt is not only allowed to pass through, but becomes a pithy unique selling point. With one significant exception: in 1632 he received the prestigious commission for a portrait of the mighty Amalia von Solms. Rembrandt portrays the governor's wife with slightly grayed blond hair and pinched corners of the mouth in full profile, which gives every portrait something austere and Amalia's tiny,but makes the obviously unloved hump on the nose visible. At the same time, however, he lovingly sets the light on the face, on the filigree pearl necklace and on the multi-layered lace collar over the black robe.