The Life and Works of Rembrandt: Art, Challenges, and Innovations

on the night of the 18th of March 1990 two men dressed as policemen enter the Isabella Garder Museum in Boston they tee out the two night guards and walk directly to the Dutch Salon where Rembrandt&#39;s Works various artworks a part of our heritage has been stolen from us it&#39;s a barbaric act some of the pains the thieves cut two rembrand paintings and 10 works out of their frames the paintings are worth $500 million it is the biggest art heist in history Seascape rbrand ever painted already a highly sought-after painter in his day the Dutch Master still enriches the world&#39;s most important collections today who was this barok genius who has Enchanted people through the centuries rembrand was not only a miraculous Talent as a painter but he also had a mighty mind mind the Dutch artist seems to capture people&#39;s Souls when he paints his provocations are extremely modern when he painted a naked woman for example he did not depict her as an object of male desire but as a victim of sexual abuse he was one of the most Innovative painters who has ever lived today scientists appearing beneath the rich layers of paint trying to uncover The Secret of REM br&#39;s magic he was very conscious of himself as a kind of conjurer as a magician a crafts person but he was also aware that there were certain tricks of the tray for a Time the master leads a life blessed by light soon to be overcast by the darkest of [Music] Shadows [Music] they hanged him the cat Thief they hanged him wonderful rembrand fine has been waiting for this day for weeks he has received an extraordinary commission the surgeons of Amsterdam want to be painted by him it is to be the young artist&#39;s first major work to do this this he has to leave his studio and take part in a postmortem Anatomy sessions were quite a public spectacle in the Netherlands at the time there was music people brought food and incense because the corpses stank so it was really a very very big show only male criminals were dissected this man contaminated by sin he is now able after his death to do an honorable Nicholas tulp is Amsterdam&#39;s leading surgeon he and his colleagues pay a lot of money for rembrand to portray their work on God&#39;s creature man for posterity to better understand the wonders of the but how to portray a random group of surgeons and their lecturer in the right light a tricky task for the young painter after all his clients want to be recognized clearly in the finished oil painting all this during the spectacular autopsy in which TLP exposes the flexor muscle of the arm rembrand comes up with an ingenious trick for this he practically Stacks the surgeons on top of each other however the surgeons are not the main attraction in his portrayal what do we see in the center the dead criminal the corpse at its core the picture is dedicated to him even if it makes a very brutal impression at first it shows the executed criminal as a human being capable of suffering and creates one of the most fascinating Works in art history but remand F dares even [Music] more he has only recently moved to Amsterdam from the small town of Leiden now he is using the commission to make a name for himself he cheekily shapes the belly button of the corpse as an [Music] R the artist&#39;s signature also speaks volumes like the great Masters he only signs his work with his first name he simply omits the van [Music] Ryan there&#39;s also this sense of ego because you know we know Michelangelo and rapael and tishan but for a Dutch guy to just use his first name is quite quite unique but with rembrand you know IM Meely it&#39;s got to be that guy in a way it&#39;s like a neon sign on your paintings the young rembrand will make Nicholas tulp Immortal with his painting for the artist the anatomy session is the starting point for a fabulous career that will lead him to the bright and dark sides of existence the simple Miller sun will revolutionize art if you go across the range of The Human Experience there will be part of ram Brand&#39;s Irv that will speak to that questions of Love questions of sexuality questions of power of violence of loneliness Rembrant van R entered the world in Leiden in 1606 his ancestors named themselves after the river that flows through the city and passed his parents Mill towards the [Music] sea I&#39;m convinced that the mill as an object which reflected the light in a certain way was very important for young rembrand he must have been attracted by the sun coming through these little windows and this is of course a fascinating image uh which would have been in the in the in the eyes and the minds also of the famous painter that later on painted [Music] portraits the writer Ono Blom goes in search of the origins of the Magician of light and Shadow in his own Hometown the first time the name of rembrand is written down on a document is in this book of the lien University and in 1620 rembrand Hermon lensis who was the son of Herman from Leen Studio larum was going to be studying the letters the Arts on this University he was onor 14 he was 14 years old a little boy with curly hair and he lived with his parents up bares I think that he came here to the academy with his father and the Rector sat down and he put for the first time in history his name on paper so this is Magic for someone who loves rrand the education that the Craftsman&#39;s son received at the oldest university in the Netherlands would also directly influence his later works if you would have to say who rbrand really was then then he was a Storyteller a brilliant Storyteller all these stories from the Greek myth and from the Bible uh rbrand painted afterwards in a very special way biblical scenes saw the depiction of ancient sagas such as the rape of pany become gripping stagings of human tragedies the even invented scenes that are not in the Bible uh so you know he he could really play with the insightfulness that he had in keeping with the motto NOA Das linia since his earliest childhood not a day goes by that rembrand does not paint or draw he devotes himself to his passion first he opens his own studio in [Music] lien [Music] then he tries his luck in Amsterdam Holland&#39;s commercial Metropolis the young artist&#39;s light shines brightly his exceptional Talent is quickly recognized in the [Music] city God Almighty can&#39;t we have some peace around here go the influential art dealer hendrik Van ISB promoted the willful painter rembrand what is it I must crack on he arranges his first commissioned portraits including that of the surgeons around Dr tulp I&#39;ve brought someone with me but more importantly he introduces rembrand to his cousin saskia who is in town for a visit good day is it true that light and Shadow come alive on your canvas at least that&#39;s what my cousin tells me uh your cousin tells you that uh so uh I may IAS we can almost imagine sasia Island Boy as a fairy tale figure who suddenly entered Rembrandt&#39;s life she was young she was beautiful she was rich she was Noble she was actually more than Rembrandt The Miller&#39;s son could ever have expected from Life naturally it&#39;s not finished yet but but perhaps you can understand on principle what I&#39;m aiming [Music] for what is that that&#39;s a secret saser is 20 years old she comes from freezeland from a traditional family of calvinist solicitors and politicians she then leaves her fian Homeland and moves to Amsterdam with him and she really proves to be a stroke of luck for him in every respect she probably often had his back if only because as a woman from high society she had a better knack for dealing with well healed clients will you be long it&#39;s so cold without you in bed I still need a bit not all the island books were enthusiastic about saskia&#39;s choice I think you need some yellow hey you can&#39;t get you can&#39;t get me about 3 months after their first encounter the two become engaged and are married a year later saskia chooses the Magician of light and Shadow rembrand is also popular among Thieves his Works have been stolen from museums more than 81 times one of his portrit is even called the takeaway remat it has already been stolen four times and reappears each time the Stockholm art Heist kept the world on tender hooks in December 200000 three men break into the Swedish national museum with machine guns and steal two renois and a rembrand as a decoy they set two cars on fire and then escaped by speedboat in 2005 the art Treasures were returned to the museum such luck has so far eluded the Isabella Garder Museum in Boston the 13 masterpieces stolen from there have been missing since 1990 a reward of $10 million has been offered for information on their [Music] recovery only one real rembrand remains in the museum it shows the artist at the age of 23 one of his extraordinary self-portraits immediately you see these dark dark dark pupils of the eyes looking out at us and I think he knows that the way people look at pictures they&#39;ll be struck it will always look like the eyes follow you but in this case it&#39;s the whole the world of light and Shadow that&#39;s going to follow you so it&#39;s really very alive and rembrand is a painter of that Epiphany in the double sense both it&#39;s an epiphany of his person his coming to light and it&#39;s an epiphany because it&#39;s the light that does it all over 80 self-portraits by rembrand have survived in these Barack selfies the artist perfects his portrayal of light and poses in a wide variety of costumes from nobleman to begga rembrance later self-portraits they&#39;re brutal because they&#39;re so realistic you know if he&#39;s got a big nose because of drinking or if he&#39;s got yellow cheeks because his liver doesn&#39;t work anymore or if it warts or whatever he will paint it he doesn&#39;t do any concession to reality as his philosophy was to really look at nature so there is not a choice of making himself more beautiful because that means that you have to fantasize about something that isn&#39;t there a stark contrast to his contemporary Peter Paul Rubin for example who although already over 60 stylizes himself as a youthful elegant artist but is Rembrandt&#39;s honesty perhaps only an effect he plays with even if you come so close you don&#39;t really know who rembrand is he comes forward if you look at the painting a self-portrait as a fascinating person but also he stays a mystery The Works themselves also also raise questions in recent decades there have been repeated doubts about the authenticity of some of the paintings such as the man with the gold helmet art historians subjected it to intensive analysis in 1986 they published their Sensational result not an original rembrand don&#39;t apply quite so thickly the light is here on the outermost edges the scientists had noticed that the girl did not correspond to Rembrandt&#39;s usual painting style better yeah the picture was probably painted by one of the more than 50 apprentices rembrand taught in recent years however some new authentic rebrands have also come to light the person responsible for that is Yan 6 I talk about him so much and I look at his work so much and every day he sort of bumps into my life he&#39;s ever present so in a sort of an academic way or in a philosophical way I&#39;m almost married to rembrand rembrand is closely linked to Yan&#39;s family history one of his ancestors was a friend of the master the first image I really remember is that little etching of rembrand sort of looking like that and I think I tore it out age eight or nine and hung it in my room and he would always look at me and I from that very moment I loved it while working for sou bees in London Yan 6 comes across a work by an alleged rembrand pupil in a catalog in 2007 auction price £1,500 his client buys the painting it later turns out to be a self-portrait by rembrand in 2013 the gy museum in Los Angeles buys it for $16 million and it is not the only time that Yan 6 demonstrates his Sensational Instinct for Rembrandt&#39;s magic half of this biblical scene was painted over in the 19th century once again six believes he can detect the Master&#39;s [Music] Hand I saw a catalog from a German auction house and I went to Cologne I saw the real real painting and I saw that parts of it were was overpainted but the Fig in the background really looked original especially that little boy looking [Music] out and that face is really rbr&#39;s face so at that very moment I decided for myself this has to be by rembrand this time Yan 6 has to raise €1.5 million with an investor to buy the painting at auction but the real Adventure is just beginning What Lies Beneath The Painted over areas an x-ray promises more figures painted by Rembrandt&#39;s hand should one dare to remove the upper layers you see the X-ray something is there and so you ask the restorer can you just take a little bit of the background away and then first they say well really and then he say yeah yeah try so the first centimeters go off and the color comes out and I remember because it was done in England I remember they called us and they said there&#39;s color there&#39;s you&#39;re right there&#39;s color and I said continue and I said it&#39;s so scary and I said no you have to do this because it&#39;s like Indiana Jones it&#39;s it&#39;s like archaeology it&#39;s an adventure you can see in in the right side this is halfway the restoration that the red color comes off and that the purple comes out also you can see that the figure behind Christ is now gone and the three figures that we showing on the X-ray are actually emerging they&#39;re coming out you can see halfway that the little boy is losing his dress and actually underneath a new body is emerging I remember when these these naked bottocks came out you know we were so excited and then we looked at each other and said oh God you know somebody thought it was this was a bit strange to to paint the the naked bum of a young kid but at the same time it&#39;s so it&#39;s so natural it&#39;s so real I mean this this this the innocence of young children and of course rbrand understood the Bible so well and this whole story is about the innocence of the world and what is more innocent than a naked child so in a way it started to make far more sense although the young rbrand only half completed his painting his pronounced ego and sense of humor are clearly visible ver positions himself above Jesus and he&#39;s looking at you he&#39;s saying I did it here I am so it shows that he&#39;s very eager and he&#39;s very self-confident and I love that because when you&#39;re in your 20s early 20s you know when you can start driving a car and when you can do all sorts of grown-up stuff you&#39;re ambitious you&#39;re experimental and you&#39;re always bluffing you&#39;re always a bit too big for life with this attitude rembrand encounters an En enironment that offers him everything in abundance when he sets foot in Amsterdam the city is in its Heyday it is the Golden Age of the Netherlands which becomes the dominant Maritime and trading power in the middle of the 17th century in Amsterdam in particular The Riches of the world were quite literally piled up gold and ivory from Africa tobacco and Furs from North America sugar and cocoa from South America and pepper and Nutmeg from Asia the population of Amsterdam grows from 40,000 to 210,000 during Rembrandt&#39;s lifetime living quarters are created at lightning speed the rich Merchants invest in real estate this is how the canal belt comes into being the city literally bursts at the seams several [Music] times Amsterdam is booming ordinary workers here earn twice as much in the mid 17th century compared to those in Cologne for example rembrand is a child of his time living it up with a par for extravagance he was particularly fond of exotic objects from far away countries inter is interestingly Rembrandt&#39;s adult life coincides exactly with the height of the Golden Age if there was ever an artist who was born at the right time in the right country it was rembrand ah painters enjoy a high reputation in the city and rembrand relishes his growing popularity the Melting Pot of Amsterdam provides him with new motifs every day my name is an estimated 5 million paintings were produced in the 17th century and it&#39;s Unique that at that time it was n just a small avangard an elite that was interested in contemporary art as is the case today but broad sections of the population foreign visitors were always surprised that one could buy pictures at the market stalles in the Netherlands and that carpenters and butchers had pictures hanging at home at that time when works of art were often even accepted as currency in Amsterdam and in the pulsating World Metropolis the name rembrand soon ranks right at the top keep still but I am holding still yes too still Merchants like Martin solman who had amassed fabulous wealth through trade had themselves immortalized by the artist more and more often for No One painted people like rembrand with almost every rembrand portrait you see something that is uncompromising sometimes you get a sense that it was production and the bills had to be paid but almost always you get a sense that there is a new invention to be brought out and rembrand is giving himself a challenge because that is how he sees art at least the art that he makes by incorporating accessories for example rembrand also tells tells stories in his portraits and he makes up small actions that bring movement into the picture a masterly trick in this way static poses become a lively snapshot that he captures on [Music] canvas Martin solman is to marry opian copit the wealthy daughter of a gunpowder Merchant the wedding painting of the two is to be more impressive than anything that has been done before until now a life-sized painting was reserved for royalty many of his Works have their explanation in his singular Devotion to be being and Performing the role of a great artist even a king couldn&#39;t get an audience with him and had to wait until he was ready and had finished what he was working on in 2016 the wedding portraits of Martin and opion become a sensation after 400 years in private hands they are offered on the market France and Holland joined forces and Acquire The Duo for €60 million now you can admire Martin and opion sometimes in the Paris Lou and sometimes in Amsterdam&#39;s reiches Museum the couple moves every 5 years petria Noble senior conservator at the reiches Museum was asked to assess the condition of the paintings before the purchase in the private chambers of the Roth&#39;s child family the paintings hung in a bedroom with open doors onto the garden there was a busy street not far away you know from the garden so I think over the years there was actually a sort of a layer of sort of grimy soot that had accumulated on top of the paintings together with her team petria Noble freed the couple from centuries of yellow repaired damage and restored them to their original [Music] appearance it is precisely in the tiniest details that Rembrandt&#39;s genius and also his inventiveness is revealed what is so stunning is that the general impression you know from a distance is that this is a real lace color I mean it really gives you the impression that it is that he depicted that in a lot of detail but in fact when you get up close it&#39;s nothing more than just little dabs and licks of black paint on top of his white layer contrary to what one would expect rembrand did not paint white lace on a black background but the other way round he was a master of Illusion who knew all the tricks and invented new [Music] ones but he was unrivaled in capturing the essence of those he portrayed [Music] the amazing thing is that you somehow believe that you&#39;re actually looking at the person with other painters they&#39;re often just lifeless mannequins but with rbrand you think you know the character of the person sometimes you have the feeling that they&#39;re still alive that they could walk through the doorway at any moment you can&#39;t really explain it it remains somewhat mysterious that person is really gazing and you really have a sense that something is going on because you get this interaction he sort of hooks you in and he takes you along and that&#39;s quite rare for an artist he portrays fear he reveals Melancholy he actually lays be everything known to human existence in the Reich Museum just a few meters away from Martin and opion is petria Noble&#39;s new workplace she is in charge of operation Night Watch under this name one of the most comprehensive restoration projects in art history began in July 2019 Rembrandt&#39;s Monumental painting his most famous work the night watch is being examined with unprecedented detail the sheer size of the painting has meant an enormous amount of challenges involved in researching the painting but also um just in simple things like how do you go about you know digital photography of such a large painting how are you going to capture all those images ultra high resolution scans provide the basis for the restoration of Rembrandt&#39;s Masterpiece which will take years it&#39;s the national painting you could say it&#39;s it&#39;s like it&#39;s in in the reiches museum it&#39;s it&#39;s hanging like the the top piece on an altar it&#39;s like the Temple of Art and the best piece in it is the night W I don&#39;t know if that is his best painting but it doesn&#39;t really matter because it&#39;s clearly the greatest Endeavor it was really showing this is what I am capable and it&#39;s a pretty awesome big picture the guard of Amsterdam who would otherwise be sitting kind of uh in a in a static portrait are suddenly coming up to us the picture has this sense of momentariness you can hear the gunfire you can hear the drum beats you can almost smell the gunm smoke this image is highly sensorial the illustrious group is typical of Rembrandt&#39;s time a marksman&#39;s Guild that provides Security in Amsterdam as a vigilante group The Giant of art immortalized himself once again in this Monumental [Music] work Petri and Noble is still impressed by Rembrandt&#39;s painting technique even after many years he&#39;s using different kinds of tricks that any other artist does you have two details of the painting right next to one another of course the lieutenant built up in this really thick impasto in multiple layers and uh when you get even closer you can sort of see you know that he&#39;s really dored that paint on I mean under a microscope it almost looks like ice cream and right next to it you have this really summary execution of the dog the dog sort of is meant to kind of blend away in the background where the lieutenant is meant to come forward that&#39;s how he builds the composition and creates that suggestion of depth of the painting few people know that the night watch was originally much larger when it was transferred to Amsterdam City Hall in 1715 something happened that would be unimaginable today today it doesn&#39;t fit through the doors so the mayor has the work trimmed on all four sides no one knows what these missing parts look like but at least a copy of Rembrandt&#39;s Masterpiece exists made by the painter Garrett lundon in 1650 it is the basis for a spectacular project there are several things that are present in the londons but missing in the night watch apparent difference is that on the night watch this figure here wearing the helmet has been cut off whereas in the londons we see his arm back here and in fact there are two missing figures and if you look closely there&#39;s even a little boy down here looking over the wall the missing sections will be reconstructed with the help of deep learning algorithms to do this the technology has firstfed hundreds of details from both images I use this alignment between the London&#39;s and the night watch um to basically send the neural network to art school so what you&#39;re seeing here in these examples is a little tile from the londons and then the same tile from the night watch and so this is basically a quiz that we&#39;re giving the neural network we say all right paint this like rembrand would paint it um and this is its best guess after hundreds of thousands of Cycles the missing parts of Rembrandt&#39;s Night Watch are then calculated from the data and this is the result so in here in the middle you see the night watch and then along the edges you can see the extension from the neural [Music] reconstruction in this way the museum creates a unique reconstruction of the Night Watch which gives an idea of how rembrand probably really planned his [Music] work and it enables new insights especially with regard to the positioning of the [Music] figures this strip of about 60 cm from the left side has a huge impact on the original composition we get a greater sense of how rbrand used you know perspective in the painting um I mean the fact that we now this the figure is holding on to this railing I mean certainly you know lead you much more into the composition and there&#39;s much more of a sense that the figures are now not in the center of the painting but actually off center since the additions were made by computer and not by Rembrandt&#39;s hand in the future the night watch will be displayed in the familiar form that enchants millions of visitors to the reich&#39;s museum every [Music] year when rembrand receives the commission for the night watch he is 34 years old he is at the height of his creative Powers Amsterdam&#39;s Elite are at his feet his marriage to sasia has granted him a life of wealth he acquires a stately home which he fills with art from all over Europe and his collection of historical and exotic exhibits he captures this flight of fancy in a self-portrait it shows him and saskia as a couple who enjoy [Music] life Rembrant was sometimes criticized for his extravagance for example his wife sasa&#39;s relatives accused him of throwing money out of the window with both hands interestingly he didn&#39;t deny this at all he only said yes we can afford it because we&#39;ve been so richly blessed by God Almighty with money and goods saskia&#39;s dowy of 40,000 gilders was used up only a few years after the wedding rbrand knew better than anyone where there is light there must be darkness and the Darkness that fell over his imposing house was long and gloomy sasia gave birth to three children all three died after a few days or weeks then finally one son tius survives look what papa is doing rembrand Tito scals you you should paint faster papa needs a bit of quiet their happiness is shortlived saskia dies at the age of only 30 when tius is oneyear old the four pregnancies had taken their toll on her and to bosis was most likely her death sentence saskia&#39;s death is the turning point in Rembrandt&#39;s life his Masterpiece the night watch is almost finished he does not yet suspect it but his Glory Days Are Over [Music] forever SAS death was a great shock to him this is reflected on the one hand in the moving drawings he made of her in the last phase of her life but also in the fact that he immediately fell into a deep creative crisis afterwards and painted almost nothing for 10 years yeah Stephanie book and her colleagues at the copper plate etching Museum in Dresden are studying saskia nearly 400 years after her death just as he was able to create a Monumental painting like the night watch rembrand also captured private details with great sensitivity we are sitting in front of one of the most beautiful drawings by rembrand ever at least it is one of the most beautiful for me this is his wife sasia a very intimate format his way of portraying life is so captivating the way the pupil is positioned the relationship between the nose and the corner of the mouth these are just tiny dots tiny little strokes a spot of light on saskia&#39;s head has aroused the interest of the researchers did rembrand subsequently correct the spontaneous sketch a technical analysis might shed light on the matter the valuable artwork is irradiated with different light wavelengths that do not damage the unique etching good in the infrared image we could clearly see with very long way of light that this brightness around the face was in fact applied with a watery chalk so that he did not make a correction but added an additional source of light afterwards this causes sasia to naturally shine out of the picture more strongly and it was obviously important for him to set this light again in this way when it comes to lighting design rembrand was the absolute Master even today camera technicians use his methods to set the scene for faces as seen here in the interview with art historian francisa godwal and David deit chief cator of the rembrand house in [Music] Amsterdam when you look at his character St studies and depictions of heads it&#39;s often noticeable that the treatment of light or how light is depicted or how a head is illuminated seems unusual godal and AIT wanted to find out how rembrand succeeded in creating atmosphere through the use of light even when he had to carve The Motif into the metal plate with a needle he mastered the play of light like no one else for example in this etching the scientists discover something astonishing in connection with this piece rembrand reveals the secret of how he influenced the light in his studio with a fabric construction over the [Music] window the cloth increases the diffusion of light in the room making it softer and dispersed but you can also see that these windows are blocked at the bottom the aim is to have light from above not only from the window but also from above in this way the master creates a light that gently envelops his models he uses light not only to create space but also saw the potential of using light alone to create or bring out emotional states more intensely Quant after saskia&#39;s death rembrand withdrew from the world his stubbornness and undiplomatic nature meant that he hardly received any more Commissions in the following years court records tell of ever greater financial problems he spends more time in nature now the etchings when you look at them the first time you do think that a lot of it is just dark scribble sometimes there&#39;s nothing but darkness and if you allow yourself to look just a little bit longer all of a sudden bam you see it&#39;s not all dark there are an incredible number of things to discover in this landscape on the one hand these windmills that we can recognize of course but also lots of people we have a farmer and a farmer&#39;s wife then we have a draftsman on the horizon on the right and we have a very mysterious pair in the foreground perhaps lovers Rembrandt&#39;s contemplation of Nature has always been directed towards the human and even the very human his cander [Music] shocks his nudes Vex his contemporaries the print is famous for the fact that it was also criticized for being so candid when people in the academy thought that one had to follow norms and rules and here for example you can see the imprint that gter make and that was simply not considered appropriate for a nude this is a corporality that simply reminds us that bodies are like that whether that&#39;s brutally honest is something you have to think about because who is being creted when we look in the mirror in the morning we&#39;re not coited either so it&#39;s a detail that brings the Vitality of life itself into the [Music] etchings rembrand has not lost his sense of humor even as a widower nor has he lost his neck for telling [Music] stories hint in at the back in the distance you can see a Reaper cutting the grain this means that we as viewers know that of course this burst of passion will probably be over quickly when they are discovered the artistic obscenities fit in with the slovenly life rembrand leads in the eyes of Amsterdam Society for years he had a love affair with the nurse H who raised his son Titus and he made promises of marriage to her imagine that this is all water here you&#39;re standing in water in water splash splash splash when he turns to the prettier and younger maid HRI who also frequently models for him things come to a [Music] head oh R the other side [Laughter] too the jilted Hera Sues rembrand and wins alamon in court he takes revenge and has her locked away for 5 years in a women&#39;s [Music] Penitentiary is the dark chapter in rem Brand&#39;s life if we look at his behavior today even if we take into account the standards of his time we have to conclude that the same person who created such tremendously sensitive works of art could be harsh and unforgiving in his personal life qu but Henri yoel stays with rembrand she becomes the second important woman at his side together they have another daughter Cornelia HRI St HRI stel was a very simple woman who couldn&#39;t even read and write properly but she must have been very astute because when rembrand had to declare bankruptcy in 1656 hria founded an art Trading Company and took rembrand on as an employee so that he could concentrate entirely on his art and that is how his legendary late work came about the late rembrand artworks break with the conventions of the time he scales everything down to the essential radical and modern from today&#39;s point of view rram works very intensively with individual Blobs of color and sometimes he simply makes use of our brain&#39;s ability to complete something that&#39;s not even there he even emits some things and we still know that it&#39;s a hand that is the crease of an arm because we complete the picture ourselves so he&#39;s concerned with showing a state of mind or showing a state of being and somehow conveying that to us that&#39;s ultimately something that modern painting especially impressionism picks up on later the art critics of his time despise this way of painting but Rembrandt&#39;s way of painting points far into the [Music] future can artificial intelligence copy the genius an advertising agency commissioned computer scientists to teach algorithms to paint like rembrand to do this they had their computers analyze all 340 of Rembrandt&#39;s paintings it is true that rembrand is kind of the pop star of Dutch arts and culture and the Dutch Masters and we could have gone with Van go maybe as well but the the important thing with rbrand is there&#39;s a lot of data available the AI Drew its conclusions from millions of data what does a rembrand nose look like how far away are the cheekbones from the eyes the algorithms analyzed the facial parts and then created their own [Music] work the biggest challenge remained how to print Rembrandt&#39;s voluminous color application on a canvas sometimes with centimeter thick layers of paint the technicians mastered this hurdle as well and developed their own printing process the result was presented to the public and to an extremely skeptical art scene as the next [Music] rembrand one reaction was quite outspoken which was I would be the Antichrist of the art world and there&#39;s a very famous rembrand expert who actually came and who had his uh magnifying glass and he looked at the painting and he said this is prostitution of rembrand do we want as humans compete with AI when it comes to art or is that is that meant for humans and is this just to help create new and more beautiful things and I think it&#39;s the [Music] latter what would the master himself have thought if remant were to see the recreated remant today he would probably grab his brush and fix it rbrand survives his son Titus and henria the woman who stood by him even without a marriage certificate both died of the plague which rided twice in Amsterdam between 1660 and 1670 in the end he lives a secluded and lonely life with only his daughter Cornelia looking in on him from time to [Music] time his contemporaries did not know what to make of his painting style [Music] there is a strong sense that rembrand himself knew that he was painting in order to be timeless in not a metaphysical sense but like in a historical sense Timeless in this sense that his work will always look fresh deep into the future I do think that the more and more we start to understand more about ourselves about our own ego and about our own position in life and how we treat reality we start to understand more and more about rbrand uh I think he was just light years ahead in observing but still even if you know him so well if you come so close he stays a [Music] mystery [Music] [Music] [Music]

on the night of the 18th of March 1990 two men dressed as policemen enter the Isabella Garder Museum in Boston they tee out the two night guards and walk directly to the Dutch Salon where Rembrandt&amp;#39;s Works various artworks a part of our heritage has been stolen from us it&amp;#39;s a barbaric act some of the pains the thieves cut two rembrand paintings and 10 works out of their frames the paintings are worth $500 million it is the biggest art heist in history Seascape rbrand ever painted already a highly sought-after painter in his day the Dutch Master still enriches the world&amp;#39;s most important collections today who was this barok genius who has Enchanted people through the centuries rembrand was not only a miraculous Talent as a painter but he also had a mighty mind mind the Dutch artist seems to capture people&amp;#39;s Souls when he paints his provocations are extremely modern when he painted a naked woman for example he did not depict her as an object of male desire but as a victim of sexual abuse he was one of the most Innovative painters who has ever lived today scientists appearing beneath the rich layers of paint trying to uncover The Secret of REM br&amp;#39;s magic he was very conscious of himself as a kind of conjurer as a magician a crafts person but he was also aware that there were certain tricks of the tray for a Time the master leads a life blessed by light soon to be overcast by the darkest of [Music] Shadows [Music] they hanged him the cat Thief they hanged him wonderful rembrand fine has been waiting for this day for weeks he has received an extraordinary commission the surgeons of Amsterdam want to be painted by him it is to be the young artist&amp;#39;s first major work to do this this he has to leave his studio and take part in a postmortem Anatomy sessions were quite a public spectacle in the Netherlands at the time there was music people brought food and incense because the corpses stank so it was really a very very big show only male criminals were dissected this man contaminated by sin he is now able after his death to do an honorable Nicholas tulp is Amsterdam&amp;#39;s leading surgeon he and his colleagues pay a lot of money for rembrand to portray their work on God&amp;#39;s creature man for posterity to better understand the wonders of the but how to portray a random group of surgeons and their lecturer in the right light a tricky task for the young painter after all his clients want to be recognized clearly in the finished oil painting all this during the spectacular autopsy in which TLP exposes the flexor muscle of the arm rembrand comes up with an ingenious trick for this he practically Stacks the surgeons on top of each other however the surgeons are not the main attraction in his portrayal what do we see in the center the dead criminal the corpse at its core the picture is dedicated to him even if it makes a very brutal impression at first it shows the executed criminal as a human being capable of suffering and creates one of the most fascinating Works in art history but remand F dares even [Music] more he has only recently moved to Amsterdam from the small town of Leiden now he is using the commission to make a name for himself he cheekily shapes the belly button of the corpse as an [Music] R the artist&amp;#39;s signature also speaks volumes like the great Masters he only signs his work with his first name he simply omits the van [Music] Ryan there&amp;#39;s also this sense of ego because you know we know Michelangelo and rapael and tishan but for a Dutch guy to just use his first name is quite quite unique but with rembrand you know IM Meely it&amp;#39;s got to be that guy in a way it&amp;#39;s like a neon sign on your paintings the young rembrand will make Nicholas tulp Immortal with his painting for the artist the anatomy session is the starting point for a fabulous career that will lead him to the bright and dark sides of existence the simple Miller sun will revolutionize art if you go across the range of The Human Experience there will be part of ram Brand&amp;#39;s Irv that will speak to that questions of Love questions of sexuality questions of power of violence of loneliness Rembrant van R entered the world in Leiden in 1606 his ancestors named themselves after the river that flows through the city and passed his parents Mill towards the [Music] sea I&amp;#39;m convinced that the mill as an object which reflected the light in a certain way was very important for young rembrand he must have been attracted by the sun coming through these little windows and this is of course a fascinating image uh which would have been in the in the in the eyes and the minds also of the famous painter that later on painted [Music] portraits the writer Ono Blom goes in search of the origins of the Magician of light and Shadow in his own Hometown the first time the name of rembrand is written down on a document is in this book of the lien University and in 1620 rembrand Hermon lensis who was the son of Herman from Leen Studio larum was going to be studying the letters the Arts on this University he was onor 14 he was 14 years old a little boy with curly hair and he lived with his parents up bares I think that he came here to the academy with his father and the Rector sat down and he put for the first time in history his name on paper so this is Magic for someone who loves rrand the education that the Craftsman&amp;#39;s son received at the oldest university in the Netherlands would also directly influence his later works if you would have to say who rbrand really was then then he was a Storyteller a brilliant Storyteller all these stories from the Greek myth and from the Bible uh rbrand painted afterwards in a very special way biblical scenes saw the depiction of ancient sagas such as the rape of pany become gripping stagings of human tragedies the even invented scenes that are not in the Bible uh so you know he he could really play with the insightfulness that he had in keeping with the motto NOA Das linia since his earliest childhood not a day goes by that rembrand does not paint or draw he devotes himself to his passion first he opens his own studio in [Music] lien [Music] then he tries his luck in Amsterdam Holland&amp;#39;s commercial Metropolis the young artist&amp;#39;s light shines brightly his exceptional Talent is quickly recognized in the [Music] city God Almighty can&amp;#39;t we have some peace around here go the influential art dealer hendrik Van ISB promoted the willful painter rembrand what is it I must crack on he arranges his first commissioned portraits including that of the surgeons around Dr tulp I&amp;#39;ve brought someone with me but more importantly he introduces rembrand to his cousin saskia who is in town for a visit good day is it true that light and Shadow come alive on your canvas at least that&amp;#39;s what my cousin tells me uh your cousin tells you that uh so uh I may IAS we can almost imagine sasia Island Boy as a fairy tale figure who suddenly entered Rembrandt&amp;#39;s life she was young she was beautiful she was rich she was Noble she was actually more than Rembrandt The Miller&amp;#39;s son could ever have expected from Life naturally it&amp;#39;s not finished yet but but perhaps you can understand on principle what I&amp;#39;m aiming [Music] for what is that that&amp;#39;s a secret saser is 20 years old she comes from freezeland from a traditional family of calvinist solicitors and politicians she then leaves her fian Homeland and moves to Amsterdam with him and she really proves to be a stroke of luck for him in every respect she probably often had his back if only because as a woman from high society she had a better knack for dealing with well healed clients will you be long it&amp;#39;s so cold without you in bed I still need a bit not all the island books were enthusiastic about saskia&amp;#39;s choice I think you need some yellow hey you can&amp;#39;t get you can&amp;#39;t get me about 3 months after their first encounter the two become engaged and are married a year later saskia chooses the Magician of light and Shadow rembrand is also popular among Thieves his Works have been stolen from museums more than 81 times one of his portrit is even called the takeaway remat it has already been stolen four times and reappears each time the Stockholm art Heist kept the world on tender hooks in December 200000 three men break into the Swedish national museum with machine guns and steal two renois and a rembrand as a decoy they set two cars on fire and then escaped by speedboat in 2005 the art Treasures were returned to the museum such luck has so far eluded the Isabella Garder Museum in Boston the 13 masterpieces stolen from there have been missing since 1990 a reward of $10 million has been offered for information on their [Music] recovery only one real rembrand remains in the museum it shows the artist at the age of 23 one of his extraordinary self-portraits immediately you see these dark dark dark pupils of the eyes looking out at us and I think he knows that the way people look at pictures they&amp;#39;ll be struck it will always look like the eyes follow you but in this case it&amp;#39;s the whole the world of light and Shadow that&amp;#39;s going to follow you so it&amp;#39;s really very alive and rembrand is a painter of that Epiphany in the double sense both it&amp;#39;s an epiphany of his person his coming to light and it&amp;#39;s an epiphany because it&amp;#39;s the light that does it all over 80 self-portraits by rembrand have survived in these Barack selfies the artist perfects his portrayal of light and poses in a wide variety of costumes from nobleman to begga rembrance later self-portraits they&amp;#39;re brutal because they&amp;#39;re so realistic you know if he&amp;#39;s got a big nose because of drinking or if he&amp;#39;s got yellow cheeks because his liver doesn&amp;#39;t work anymore or if it warts or whatever he will paint it he doesn&amp;#39;t do any concession to reality as his philosophy was to really look at nature so there is not a choice of making himself more beautiful because that means that you have to fantasize about something that isn&amp;#39;t there a stark contrast to his contemporary Peter Paul Rubin for example who although already over 60 stylizes himself as a youthful elegant artist but is Rembrandt&amp;#39;s honesty perhaps only an effect he plays with even if you come so close you don&amp;#39;t really know who rembrand is he comes forward if you look at the painting a self-portrait as a fascinating person but also he stays a mystery The Works themselves also also raise questions in recent decades there have been repeated doubts about the authenticity of some of the paintings such as the man with the gold helmet art historians subjected it to intensive analysis in 1986 they published their Sensational result not an original rembrand don&amp;#39;t apply quite so thickly the light is here on the outermost edges the scientists had noticed that the girl did not correspond to Rembrandt&amp;#39;s usual painting style better yeah the picture was probably painted by one of the more than 50 apprentices rembrand taught in recent years however some new authentic rebrands have also come to light the person responsible for that is Yan 6 I talk about him so much and I look at his work so much and every day he sort of bumps into my life he&amp;#39;s ever present so in a sort of an academic way or in a philosophical way I&amp;#39;m almost married to rembrand rembrand is closely linked to Yan&amp;#39;s family history one of his ancestors was a friend of the master the first image I really remember is that little etching of rembrand sort of looking like that and I think I tore it out age eight or nine and hung it in my room and he would always look at me and I from that very moment I loved it while working for sou bees in London Yan 6 comes across a work by an alleged rembrand pupil in a catalog in 2007 auction price £1,500 his client buys the painting it later turns out to be a self-portrait by rembrand in 2013 the gy museum in Los Angeles buys it for $16 million and it is not the only time that Yan 6 demonstrates his Sensational Instinct for Rembrandt&amp;#39;s magic half of this biblical scene was painted over in the 19th century once again six believes he can detect the Master&amp;#39;s [Music] Hand I saw a catalog from a German auction house and I went to Cologne I saw the real real painting and I saw that parts of it were was overpainted but the Fig in the background really looked original especially that little boy looking [Music] out and that face is really rbr&amp;#39;s face so at that very moment I decided for myself this has to be by rembrand this time Yan 6 has to raise €1.5 million with an investor to buy the painting at auction but the real Adventure is just beginning What Lies Beneath The Painted over areas an x-ray promises more figures painted by Rembrandt&amp;#39;s hand should one dare to remove the upper layers you see the X-ray something is there and so you ask the restorer can you just take a little bit of the background away and then first they say well really and then he say yeah yeah try so the first centimeters go off and the color comes out and I remember because it was done in England I remember they called us and they said there&amp;#39;s color there&amp;#39;s you&amp;#39;re right there&amp;#39;s color and I said continue and I said it&amp;#39;s so scary and I said no you have to do this because it&amp;#39;s like Indiana Jones it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s like archaeology it&amp;#39;s an adventure you can see in in the right side this is halfway the restoration that the red color comes off and that the purple comes out also you can see that the figure behind Christ is now gone and the three figures that we showing on the X-ray are actually emerging they&amp;#39;re coming out you can see halfway that the little boy is losing his dress and actually underneath a new body is emerging I remember when these these naked bottocks came out you know we were so excited and then we looked at each other and said oh God you know somebody thought it was this was a bit strange to to paint the the naked bum of a young kid but at the same time it&amp;#39;s so it&amp;#39;s so natural it&amp;#39;s so real I mean this this this the innocence of young children and of course rbrand understood the Bible so well and this whole story is about the innocence of the world and what is more innocent than a naked child so in a way it started to make far more sense although the young rbrand only half completed his painting his pronounced ego and sense of humor are clearly visible ver positions himself above Jesus and he&amp;#39;s looking at you he&amp;#39;s saying I did it here I am so it shows that he&amp;#39;s very eager and he&amp;#39;s very self-confident and I love that because when you&amp;#39;re in your 20s early 20s you know when you can start driving a car and when you can do all sorts of grown-up stuff you&amp;#39;re ambitious you&amp;#39;re experimental and you&amp;#39;re always bluffing you&amp;#39;re always a bit too big for life with this attitude rembrand encounters an En enironment that offers him everything in abundance when he sets foot in Amsterdam the city is in its Heyday it is the Golden Age of the Netherlands which becomes the dominant Maritime and trading power in the middle of the 17th century in Amsterdam in particular The Riches of the world were quite literally piled up gold and ivory from Africa tobacco and Furs from North America sugar and cocoa from South America and pepper and Nutmeg from Asia the population of Amsterdam grows from 40,000 to 210,000 during Rembrandt&amp;#39;s lifetime living quarters are created at lightning speed the rich Merchants invest in real estate this is how the canal belt comes into being the city literally bursts at the seams several [Music] times Amsterdam is booming ordinary workers here earn twice as much in the mid 17th century compared to those in Cologne for example rembrand is a child of his time living it up with a par for extravagance he was particularly fond of exotic objects from far away countries inter is interestingly Rembrandt&amp;#39;s adult life coincides exactly with the height of the Golden Age if there was ever an artist who was born at the right time in the right country it was rembrand ah painters enjoy a high reputation in the city and rembrand relishes his growing popularity the Melting Pot of Amsterdam provides him with new motifs every day my name is an estimated 5 million paintings were produced in the 17th century and it&amp;#39;s Unique that at that time it was n just a small avangard an elite that was interested in contemporary art as is the case today but broad sections of the population foreign visitors were always surprised that one could buy pictures at the market stalles in the Netherlands and that carpenters and butchers had pictures hanging at home at that time when works of art were often even accepted as currency in Amsterdam and in the pulsating World Metropolis the name rembrand soon ranks right at the top keep still but I am holding still yes too still Merchants like Martin solman who had amassed fabulous wealth through trade had themselves immortalized by the artist more and more often for No One painted people like rembrand with almost every rembrand portrait you see something that is uncompromising sometimes you get a sense that it was production and the bills had to be paid but almost always you get a sense that there is a new invention to be brought out and rembrand is giving himself a challenge because that is how he sees art at least the art that he makes by incorporating accessories for example rembrand also tells tells stories in his portraits and he makes up small actions that bring movement into the picture a masterly trick in this way static poses become a lively snapshot that he captures on [Music] canvas Martin solman is to marry opian copit the wealthy daughter of a gunpowder Merchant the wedding painting of the two is to be more impressive than anything that has been done before until now a life-sized painting was reserved for royalty many of his Works have their explanation in his singular Devotion to be being and Performing the role of a great artist even a king couldn&amp;#39;t get an audience with him and had to wait until he was ready and had finished what he was working on in 2016 the wedding portraits of Martin and opion become a sensation after 400 years in private hands they are offered on the market France and Holland joined forces and Acquire The Duo for €60 million now you can admire Martin and opion sometimes in the Paris Lou and sometimes in Amsterdam&amp;#39;s reiches Museum the couple moves every 5 years petria Noble senior conservator at the reiches Museum was asked to assess the condition of the paintings before the purchase in the private chambers of the Roth&amp;#39;s child family the paintings hung in a bedroom with open doors onto the garden there was a busy street not far away you know from the garden so I think over the years there was actually a sort of a layer of sort of grimy soot that had accumulated on top of the paintings together with her team petria Noble freed the couple from centuries of yellow repaired damage and restored them to their original [Music] appearance it is precisely in the tiniest details that Rembrandt&amp;#39;s genius and also his inventiveness is revealed what is so stunning is that the general impression you know from a distance is that this is a real lace color I mean it really gives you the impression that it is that he depicted that in a lot of detail but in fact when you get up close it&amp;#39;s nothing more than just little dabs and licks of black paint on top of his white layer contrary to what one would expect rembrand did not paint white lace on a black background but the other way round he was a master of Illusion who knew all the tricks and invented new [Music] ones but he was unrivaled in capturing the essence of those he portrayed [Music] the amazing thing is that you somehow believe that you&amp;#39;re actually looking at the person with other painters they&amp;#39;re often just lifeless mannequins but with rbrand you think you know the character of the person sometimes you have the feeling that they&amp;#39;re still alive that they could walk through the doorway at any moment you can&amp;#39;t really explain it it remains somewhat mysterious that person is really gazing and you really have a sense that something is going on because you get this interaction he sort of hooks you in and he takes you along and that&amp;#39;s quite rare for an artist he portrays fear he reveals Melancholy he actually lays be everything known to human existence in the Reich Museum just a few meters away from Martin and opion is petria Noble&amp;#39;s new workplace she is in charge of operation Night Watch under this name one of the most comprehensive restoration projects in art history began in July 2019 Rembrandt&amp;#39;s Monumental painting his most famous work the night watch is being examined with unprecedented detail the sheer size of the painting has meant an enormous amount of challenges involved in researching the painting but also um just in simple things like how do you go about you know digital photography of such a large painting how are you going to capture all those images ultra high resolution scans provide the basis for the restoration of Rembrandt&amp;#39;s Masterpiece which will take years it&amp;#39;s the national painting you could say it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s like it&amp;#39;s in in the reiches museum it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s hanging like the the top piece on an altar it&amp;#39;s like the Temple of Art and the best piece in it is the night W I don&amp;#39;t know if that is his best painting but it doesn&amp;#39;t really matter because it&amp;#39;s clearly the greatest Endeavor it was really showing this is what I am capable and it&amp;#39;s a pretty awesome big picture the guard of Amsterdam who would otherwise be sitting kind of uh in a in a static portrait are suddenly coming up to us the picture has this sense of momentariness you can hear the gunfire you can hear the drum beats you can almost smell the gunm smoke this image is highly sensorial the illustrious group is typical of Rembrandt&amp;#39;s time a marksman&amp;#39;s Guild that provides Security in Amsterdam as a vigilante group The Giant of art immortalized himself once again in this Monumental [Music] work Petri and Noble is still impressed by Rembrandt&amp;#39;s painting technique even after many years he&amp;#39;s using different kinds of tricks that any other artist does you have two details of the painting right next to one another of course the lieutenant built up in this really thick impasto in multiple layers and uh when you get even closer you can sort of see you know that he&amp;#39;s really dored that paint on I mean under a microscope it almost looks like ice cream and right next to it you have this really summary execution of the dog the dog sort of is meant to kind of blend away in the background where the lieutenant is meant to come forward that&amp;#39;s how he builds the composition and creates that suggestion of depth of the painting few people know that the night watch was originally much larger when it was transferred to Amsterdam City Hall in 1715 something happened that would be unimaginable today today it doesn&amp;#39;t fit through the doors so the mayor has the work trimmed on all four sides no one knows what these missing parts look like but at least a copy of Rembrandt&amp;#39;s Masterpiece exists made by the painter Garrett lundon in 1650 it is the basis for a spectacular project there are several things that are present in the londons but missing in the night watch apparent difference is that on the night watch this figure here wearing the helmet has been cut off whereas in the londons we see his arm back here and in fact there are two missing figures and if you look closely there&amp;#39;s even a little boy down here looking over the wall the missing sections will be reconstructed with the help of deep learning algorithms to do this the technology has firstfed hundreds of details from both images I use this alignment between the London&amp;#39;s and the night watch um to basically send the neural network to art school so what you&amp;#39;re seeing here in these examples is a little tile from the londons and then the same tile from the night watch and so this is basically a quiz that we&amp;#39;re giving the neural network we say all right paint this like rembrand would paint it um and this is its best guess after hundreds of thousands of Cycles the missing parts of Rembrandt&amp;#39;s Night Watch are then calculated from the data and this is the result so in here in the middle you see the night watch and then along the edges you can see the extension from the neural [Music] reconstruction in this way the museum creates a unique reconstruction of the Night Watch which gives an idea of how rembrand probably really planned his [Music] work and it enables new insights especially with regard to the positioning of the [Music] figures this strip of about 60 cm from the left side has a huge impact on the original composition we get a greater sense of how rbrand used you know perspective in the painting um I mean the fact that we now this the figure is holding on to this railing I mean certainly you know lead you much more into the composition and there&amp;#39;s much more of a sense that the figures are now not in the center of the painting but actually off center since the additions were made by computer and not by Rembrandt&amp;#39;s hand in the future the night watch will be displayed in the familiar form that enchants millions of visitors to the reich&amp;#39;s museum every [Music] year when rembrand receives the commission for the night watch he is 34 years old he is at the height of his creative Powers Amsterdam&amp;#39;s Elite are at his feet his marriage to sasia has granted him a life of wealth he acquires a stately home which he fills with art from all over Europe and his collection of historical and exotic exhibits he captures this flight of fancy in a self-portrait it shows him and saskia as a couple who enjoy [Music] life Rembrant was sometimes criticized for his extravagance for example his wife sasa&amp;#39;s relatives accused him of throwing money out of the window with both hands interestingly he didn&amp;#39;t deny this at all he only said yes we can afford it because we&amp;#39;ve been so richly blessed by God Almighty with money and goods saskia&amp;#39;s dowy of 40,000 gilders was used up only a few years after the wedding rbrand knew better than anyone where there is light there must be darkness and the Darkness that fell over his imposing house was long and gloomy sasia gave birth to three children all three died after a few days or weeks then finally one son tius survives look what papa is doing rembrand Tito scals you you should paint faster papa needs a bit of quiet their happiness is shortlived saskia dies at the age of only 30 when tius is oneyear old the four pregnancies had taken their toll on her and to bosis was most likely her death sentence saskia&amp;#39;s death is the turning point in Rembrandt&amp;#39;s life his Masterpiece the night watch is almost finished he does not yet suspect it but his Glory Days Are Over [Music] forever SAS death was a great shock to him this is reflected on the one hand in the moving drawings he made of her in the last phase of her life but also in the fact that he immediately fell into a deep creative crisis afterwards and painted almost nothing for 10 years yeah Stephanie book and her colleagues at the copper plate etching Museum in Dresden are studying saskia nearly 400 years after her death just as he was able to create a Monumental painting like the night watch rembrand also captured private details with great sensitivity we are sitting in front of one of the most beautiful drawings by rembrand ever at least it is one of the most beautiful for me this is his wife sasia a very intimate format his way of portraying life is so captivating the way the pupil is positioned the relationship between the nose and the corner of the mouth these are just tiny dots tiny little strokes a spot of light on saskia&amp;#39;s head has aroused the interest of the researchers did rembrand subsequently correct the spontaneous sketch a technical analysis might shed light on the matter the valuable artwork is irradiated with different light wavelengths that do not damage the unique etching good in the infrared image we could clearly see with very long way of light that this brightness around the face was in fact applied with a watery chalk so that he did not make a correction but added an additional source of light afterwards this causes sasia to naturally shine out of the picture more strongly and it was obviously important for him to set this light again in this way when it comes to lighting design rembrand was the absolute Master even today camera technicians use his methods to set the scene for faces as seen here in the interview with art historian francisa godwal and David deit chief cator of the rembrand house in [Music] Amsterdam when you look at his character St studies and depictions of heads it&amp;#39;s often noticeable that the treatment of light or how light is depicted or how a head is illuminated seems unusual godal and AIT wanted to find out how rembrand succeeded in creating atmosphere through the use of light even when he had to carve The Motif into the metal plate with a needle he mastered the play of light like no one else for example in this etching the scientists discover something astonishing in connection with this piece rembrand reveals the secret of how he influenced the light in his studio with a fabric construction over the [Music] window the cloth increases the diffusion of light in the room making it softer and dispersed but you can also see that these windows are blocked at the bottom the aim is to have light from above not only from the window but also from above in this way the master creates a light that gently envelops his models he uses light not only to create space but also saw the potential of using light alone to create or bring out emotional states more intensely Quant after saskia&amp;#39;s death rembrand withdrew from the world his stubbornness and undiplomatic nature meant that he hardly received any more Commissions in the following years court records tell of ever greater financial problems he spends more time in nature now the etchings when you look at them the first time you do think that a lot of it is just dark scribble sometimes there&amp;#39;s nothing but darkness and if you allow yourself to look just a little bit longer all of a sudden bam you see it&amp;#39;s not all dark there are an incredible number of things to discover in this landscape on the one hand these windmills that we can recognize of course but also lots of people we have a farmer and a farmer&amp;#39;s wife then we have a draftsman on the horizon on the right and we have a very mysterious pair in the foreground perhaps lovers Rembrandt&amp;#39;s contemplation of Nature has always been directed towards the human and even the very human his cander [Music] shocks his nudes Vex his contemporaries the print is famous for the fact that it was also criticized for being so candid when people in the academy thought that one had to follow norms and rules and here for example you can see the imprint that gter make and that was simply not considered appropriate for a nude this is a corporality that simply reminds us that bodies are like that whether that&amp;#39;s brutally honest is something you have to think about because who is being creted when we look in the mirror in the morning we&amp;#39;re not coited either so it&amp;#39;s a detail that brings the Vitality of life itself into the [Music] etchings rembrand has not lost his sense of humor even as a widower nor has he lost his neck for telling [Music] stories hint in at the back in the distance you can see a Reaper cutting the grain this means that we as viewers know that of course this burst of passion will probably be over quickly when they are discovered the artistic obscenities fit in with the slovenly life rembrand leads in the eyes of Amsterdam Society for years he had a love affair with the nurse H who raised his son Titus and he made promises of marriage to her imagine that this is all water here you&amp;#39;re standing in water in water splash splash splash when he turns to the prettier and younger maid HRI who also frequently models for him things come to a [Music] head oh R the other side [Laughter] too the jilted Hera Sues rembrand and wins alamon in court he takes revenge and has her locked away for 5 years in a women&amp;#39;s [Music] Penitentiary is the dark chapter in rem Brand&amp;#39;s life if we look at his behavior today even if we take into account the standards of his time we have to conclude that the same person who created such tremendously sensitive works of art could be harsh and unforgiving in his personal life qu but Henri yoel stays with rembrand she becomes the second important woman at his side together they have another daughter Cornelia HRI St HRI stel was a very simple woman who couldn&amp;#39;t even read and write properly but she must have been very astute because when rembrand had to declare bankruptcy in 1656 hria founded an art Trading Company and took rembrand on as an employee so that he could concentrate entirely on his art and that is how his legendary late work came about the late rembrand artworks break with the conventions of the time he scales everything down to the essential radical and modern from today&amp;#39;s point of view rram works very intensively with individual Blobs of color and sometimes he simply makes use of our brain&amp;#39;s ability to complete something that&amp;#39;s not even there he even emits some things and we still know that it&amp;#39;s a hand that is the crease of an arm because we complete the picture ourselves so he&amp;#39;s concerned with showing a state of mind or showing a state of being and somehow conveying that to us that&amp;#39;s ultimately something that modern painting especially impressionism picks up on later the art critics of his time despise this way of painting but Rembrandt&amp;#39;s way of painting points far into the [Music] future can artificial intelligence copy the genius an advertising agency commissioned computer scientists to teach algorithms to paint like rembrand to do this they had their computers analyze all 340 of Rembrandt&amp;#39;s paintings it is true that rembrand is kind of the pop star of Dutch arts and culture and the Dutch Masters and we could have gone with Van go maybe as well but the the important thing with rbrand is there&amp;#39;s a lot of data available the AI Drew its conclusions from millions of data what does a rembrand nose look like how far away are the cheekbones from the eyes the algorithms analyzed the facial parts and then created their own [Music] work the biggest challenge remained how to print Rembrandt&amp;#39;s voluminous color application on a canvas sometimes with centimeter thick layers of paint the technicians mastered this hurdle as well and developed their own printing process the result was presented to the public and to an extremely skeptical art scene as the next [Music] rembrand one reaction was quite outspoken which was I would be the Antichrist of the art world and there&amp;#39;s a very famous rembrand expert who actually came and who had his uh magnifying glass and he looked at the painting and he said this is prostitution of rembrand do we want as humans compete with AI when it comes to art or is that is that meant for humans and is this just to help create new and more beautiful things and I think it&amp;#39;s the [Music] latter what would the master himself have thought if remant were to see the recreated remant today he would probably grab his brush and fix it rbrand survives his son Titus and henria the woman who stood by him even without a marriage certificate both died of the plague which rided twice in Amsterdam between 1660 and 1670 in the end he lives a secluded and lonely life with only his daughter Cornelia looking in on him from time to [Music] time his contemporaries did not know what to make of his painting style [Music] there is a strong sense that rembrand himself knew that he was painting in order to be timeless in not a metaphysical sense but like in a historical sense Timeless in this sense that his work will always look fresh deep into the future I do think that the more and more we start to understand more about ourselves about our own ego and about our own position in life and how we treat reality we start to understand more and more about rbrand uh I think he was just light years ahead in observing but still even if you know him so well if you come so close he stays a [Music] mystery [Music] [Music] [Music]

Transcript for:The Life and Works of Rembrandt: Art, Challenges, and Innovations

Transcript for:
The Life and Works of Rembrandt: Art, Challenges, and Innovations