Until now Rembrandt has eluded his biographers. The scarcity of documentary evidence on the one hand and the enormous scale of his artistic achievement on the other have left us at once dazzled and bereft. Now, after more than twenty years of work, Simon Schama has managed to combine an absolute mastery of the painter's life and times with an unprecedented sympathy for Rembrandt's character as it found both expression and transformation in his art. The result is enthralling as biography and as history, but above all it ...
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Until now Rembrandt has eluded his biographers. The scarcity of documentary evidence on the one hand and the enormous scale of his artistic achievement on the other have left us at once dazzled and bereft. Now, after more than twenty years of work, Simon Schama has managed to combine an absolute mastery of the painter's life and times with an unprecedented sympathy for Rembrandt's character as it found both expression and transformation in his art. The result is enthralling as biography and as history, but above all it amounts to the first reconstruction of Rembrandt's genius that does full justice to its subject.
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Seller's Description:
Used-Very Good. VG paperback. Published in paperback 2000 with numerous colour and B&W illustrations; binding tight; spine faintly creased; cover very good; a clean, tidy copy. This is a heavy book (about 2.6 Kg packed); additional postage may be required.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has soft covers. With owner's inscription inside cover. In good all round condition. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 2600grams, ISBN: 9780140288414.
Schama writes well. However, he exhausts the subject to a point just shy of losing sight of Rembrandt. Art and history lovers will be fascinated, but the casual reader will get lost in the side streets of history.
That said, it is a valuable contribution to the life and times of Rembrandt.
Eric
May 10, 2007
Definitive
Here is the complete Rembrandt. The man, his art, all in the context of his times. Only Schama in our generation could paint the picture so completely, depict the daily life of the people Rembrandt lived and worked among and whom he chose as the models for his biblical and genre paintings. The technology of the work, the contemporaries who painted and etched in the Low Countries, the battles that raged without, the personal loss, the joys, the tribulations in his life. Rembrandt's brief time in the sun of fashion and his humiliation at the hands of the people who could not share his vision. The whole world, in other words, made comprehensible, flesh and blood. Schama makes us artists alongside Rembrandt and we see the world through his eyes. We also see the miracle of his self-portraits and we look into his eyes and at last we see the life reflected in them and understand the man. A real achievement of story-telling, art history scholarship and the writer's craft. Schama at his best.
