Schwartzlist columns

431 The transparent connoisseur 9: Keeping an open mind

Gary Schwartz, with Edward Rosser

From a mail of 1 September 2024 from Otto Naumann: “The safest position as a connoisseur is that of a Naysayer.  In this position, one doesn’t have to explain oneself, only say something like ‘I know this artist, and this object is not by him.’ But to say that an item can be attributed to a particular artist is quite another proposal, one that needs a lot of explanation.” A case in point. (Not the one Otto was writing about.)

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430 Isaac van Ostade and me

For a general book on Dutch seventeenth-century painting, yesterday I wrote a text on the winter landscape, represented by a painting by Isaac van Ostade in the National Gallery, London. I’m afraid it reads more like a column than part of a survey. It may not make its way into the book, but I don’t want it to vanish, so I have expanded it into … a column.

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429 How to convert indigenous Formosans to Calvinism

A buildup for a lecture that I gave online for the National Museum of Taiwan History, now on YouTube. It’s about an extraordinary painting of a Dutch minister who in the 1630s and ‘40s converted thousands of Formosans to the true Christian faith. The painting shows 121 men and boys and 110 women, children and infants in the thrall of the teachings and ruthless ministrations of Robertus Junius.

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428 A bad day in Baltimore in 1963

College and graduate school funks can strike deep wounds. I’m not sure that reporting on this one is a service to students of today who might read it. It’s about how my aversion to anachronistic period names got me into trouble.

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427 Rembrandt’s jottings – and a Spinoza invitation

A piece of forgotten Rembrandt research exercises a perverse fascination on Schwartz. He passes it on to you, along with an announcement of a Spinoza symposium on 16 May in Amsterdam. Continue reading “427 Rembrandt’s jottings – and a Spinoza invitation”

425 Do you doff your turban for the pope?

The book about which I have been telling you for years now, Rembrandt seen through Jewish eyes: the artist’s meaning to Jews from his time to ours, edited by Mirjam Knotter and myself, has been published by Amsterdam University Press and is available in hardback for €39.99 or as an e-book in Open Access for free.

This column owes its inception to a rare and precious happening. A young colleague discovered something I had missed in an article of 2013, and she sent it to me to publish. Back to Robert Sherley in Rome. Thank you, Günay Heydərli.

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424 The transparent connoisseur 8: An ill-judged attribution in Den Bosch

A Dutch museum features a fascinating painting of the art of painting itself, in the guise of a woman artist at the easel. The museum ignores overwhelming evidence for its origins in a collaboration between Jan Brueghel I and Frans Francken II and wrongheadedly gives it to Jan Brueghel II.

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423 Rembrandt seen through Jewish eyes – the book and a last-minute invitation to its launching

Twelve essays on the theme of Rembrandt seen through Jewish eyes are coming out in a book edited by Schwartz and Mirjam Knotter of the Jewish Museum, Amsterdam. You are invited to the launching on 14 December at the museum.

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