400 Moi?
400 Moi? asks the huge blown-up etching of Rembrandt, with its trademark vermicelli hair, potato nose and quizzical mouth. Considering his bankruptcy and the trouble he had in later life getting his rich and powerful patrons to pay what they owed, he might well relish the irony that 400 years after his birth, his self portrait, dwarfing the corporate logos beneath, is plainly visible over one of the best known views in Amsterdam, pulling in the punters for what is a genuinely exhilarating exhibition.
How modest of the Dutch, you might think, to share their national icon with that braggadocio symbol of southern baroque, Caravaggio; but doesn't it dilute Rembrandt's impact? Despite the Texan brag in the visitors' book 'Caravaggio is Best' this thoughtful juxtaposition of the two masters of light and darkness, separated as they were by a generation, only leads to a better understanding and a deeper reverence for both.
There is a strong, uncluttered thread of narrative in the exhibition which takes you to the heart of the paradoxical similarity and difference between the northern and southern masters.
The story begins with some paintings from the Utrecht Caravaggisti, Gerard van Honthorst, Dirck van Baburen, and Hendrick ter Brugghen. In 1629, Constantijn Huygens, influential young secretary to the stadhouder, Frederik Hendrik, who fell instantly in love with the work of Jan Lievens and Rembrandt, in their Leiden studio, nevertheless expressed the view that they would do well to get themselves 'finished' by a visit to Italy. Although this was not within the pocket or perhaps the inclination of the two young painters, they were not immune to the Italian influence; in particular they could see the fine chiaroscuro effects and new realism achieved by the home grown Caravaggisti.
This may be glimpsed in A Soldier in a Gorget and Plumed Bonnet, which was probably Rembrandt's first tronie or head of a type of person, rather than a portrait. Used as a bait for the art market in order to show what might be achieved in a commissioned portrait or large history painting, such as Rembrandt desperately wanted to paint, it is one of many small early paintings. Here, drizzled like honey on the armour, the folds of a lumpen face, the crusted curlicues of the feather in his hat, we see Rembrandt's early love affair with the many sourced light that he is to paint almost like an entity itself. Here, too, is the darkness of a shadowed eye, a concealing hat, a background that will not reveal, only hint.
Impossible to list the richness of this trove of paintings from 22 named sources plus the Dutch-owned ones, plainly hung, each painter in a proximity to the other, that stuns with its correspondences and profound disparities. For example Rembrandt's Holy Family, with a typically Dutch bourgeois trio of besotted mother, uxorious father, replete baby, all carved out of the tenderest shadow, is focussed on the drop of milk, still hanging on Mary's breast. While next to it, Caravaggio's lithe little Christ (The Holy Family with St John the Baptist) has something of Cupid about him and his mother's black eyes, despite the careful focus of light on her child, gaze out of the picture and beyond.
Similarly, in Caravaggio's The Betrayal of Christ the drama of light shooting down the arm of the arresting soldier points to the feverish embrace between Christ and Judas while adjacent, in Rembrandt's The Denial of St Peter there is a defeated, sorrowful silence in the lamplit face of the saint.
Caravaggio's Love Triumphant shows a lusciously painted winged boy, every fold in his ivory belly and sex lovingly portrayed, wearing the expression of a very fly rent boy and carelessly bestriding the scattered symbols of a previous age's faithfulness. Rembrandt's Ganymede however, is a fat little putti, still with his milk teeth and his face scrunched up with the terror that makes him pee in the grip of the eagle.
Restless, ruthless, dramatic and street-wise as Caravaggio was, in paintings like the Supper at Emmaus and The Conversion of the Magdalen the drama of light and dark is lit with a thoughtful tenderness. The tenderness of insight is all but habitual with Rembrandt but his magnificent history paintings, like Belshazzor's Feast, sculpted out of light and dark, also make clear what this exhibition is trying to explain, the tangled, fascinating roots of creative influence.
On a practical note, buy your joint discount ticket – 25 euros covers the Rijks Museum and its Rembrandts too, including the Night Watch – at the AUB ticket shop on the Leidse Plein, thus avoiding the terrible queues at the van Gogh Museum; do go upstairs to visit the small exhibition on the influence of Rembrandt on van Gogh; and do buy the excellent catalogue.
Kate Foley lives in Amsterdam. Her latest poetry collection is Laughter from the Hive (Shoestring Press, Beeston, Notts., 2004).
Kate Foley reviews the Rembrandt/Caravaggio Exhibition at the van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (until 18 June).