A pretty critical review of Svetlana Alpers’s book Rembrandt’s enterprise: the studio and the market, Chicago (University of Chicago Press) 1988, published in Art in America 76, nr. 11 (November 1988), pp. 25-29
Articles
“Though deficient in beauty”: a documentary history and interpretation of Rembrandt’s 1654 painting of Bathsheba
“‘Though deficient in beauty’: a documentary history and interpretation of Rembrandt’s 1654 painting of Bathsheba,” in: Rembrandt’s Bathsheba reading King David’s letter, ed. Ann Jensen Adams, Cambridge, England (Cambridge University Press) 1998, pp. 176-203
For a volume on Rembrandt’s Bathsheba in the Cambridge University Press series Masterpieces of Western painting, edited by Ann Adams, I contributed an essay on the provenance and critical history of the painting, ending with an interpretation of my own.
Love in the kunstkamer: additions to the work of Guillam van Haecht (1593-1637)
An exploration of the riches of beauty and meaning invested in and taken from art by Guillam van Haecht and his patron Cornelis van der Geest. Published in the Dutch art magazine Tableau, the summer issue of 1996, pp. 43-52.
Visions of Tondal in Bosch mode
Scroll down to below the sidebar, which I was unable to disable.
A Last Judgment to scare the hell out of you
At a symposium in Vienna devoted to Jheronimus Bosch’s Last Judgment in the Paintings Gallery of the Akademie der bildenden Künste, I presented a paper that was published only a few months later (hats off to Julia Neuhaus and her staff ) in a volume of proceedings. It was dedicated to the memory of Roger Marijnissen, who died earlier that year, in January 2019, at the age of 95.
Gary Schwartz, “A Last Judgment to scare the hell out of you,” in Hieronymus Boschs Weltgerichts-Triptychon in seiner Zeit: Publikation zur gleichnamigen internationalen Konferenz vom 21. bis 23. November 2019 in der Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien | Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgment Triptych in the 1500s: Publication of the proceedings of the international conference held from 21 – 23 November 2019 in the Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vienna (Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste) 2020, pp. 149-67
PDF of Gary Schwartz, A Last Judgment to scare the hell out of you
Because it was not possible to place all the illustrations I wanted, the depictions of the Vision of Tundale by followers or copyists of Bosch had to be left out. I added them separately at Visions of Tondal in Bosch mode.
Yes, but: Rembrandt as an unstable medium
“From the word go, admiration for Rembrandt has was offset by annoyances and uncertainties of various kinds.” Thoughts on the matter as published in the Rembrandt Year volume of The Low Countries, 14 (2006), pp. 221-26
Continue reading “Yes, but: Rembrandt as an unstable medium”
“The years have imposed heavy tribulations”: Rembrandt’s portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert
Working in 2021 on a book about a disputed Rembrandt self-portrait, I wished to refer to the article below, from July 1992, for its comments on the Rembrandt Research Project. The English text had not been published before. If I am not mistaken, this article has never been referred to in subsequent literature on the painting.
The making of Life? or Theater?
This text was written, in Dutch, for the magazine of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the first integral edition of the great creation of Charlotte Salomon (1917-43), Life? or Theater? The original work is in care of the museum, and since its publication in book form has constantly been on demand for exhibitions all over the world. The English translation below was generated with astonishing accuracy by Google Translate and edited by me. See also
Continue reading “The making of Life? or Theater?”
From Otto Benesch to Peter Schatborn: a concordance
For whatever bad reason this has happened, the long-awaited catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings by Peter Schatborn, former head of the department of prints and drawings of the Rijksmuseum, has been published without a concordance in which one can look up the drawings by their Benesch numbers. Those are the numbers that have been used universally since the appearance in 1954-57 of the catalogue by Otto Benesch, edited by his wife Eva Benesch, In 1974, after the death of Otto, Eva brought out a revised edition. Both were published by Phaidon Press. Peter Schatborn’s catalogue came out in 2019 in a volume that also contains Rembrandt’s etchings: Peter Schatborn and Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt: the complete etchings and drawings, Cologne (Taschen) 2019.
Because I found Schatborn’s catalogue unacceptably irritating to use without a concordance – for which reason I have not been using it at all – I have made a concordance, which I make available to all.
Comparing Rembrandt and Saenredam: Het belang van banale zaken
In an article in the Dutch art magazine Kunstschrift, the editor, Mariette Haveman, disparaged the importance Schwartz attaches to documentary records as evidence for understanding Rembrandt as a person. Schwartz responds.
Letter to the editor: Gary Schwartz, 8 December 1991: “Het belang van banale zaken,” Kunstschrift 36:1 (1992), p. 6