Rembrandt refurbished by Reynolds
9 July 2015
As of today the art-historical information and technical documents of “Susanna and the elders” and two other Rembrandt paintings from the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Berlin (“Self-portrait with a velvet beret” and “Samson betrayed by Delilah”) are available on the Rembrandt Database.
As already mentioned in the news item below, technical analysis and research on the Susanna painting have delivered sensational findings. Recently Katja Kleinert and Claudia Laurenze-Landsberg (Rembrandt research project Gemäldegalerie Berlin) discovered that Sir Joshua Reynolds, who owned the painting between 1769-1792, made significant changes to the painting. During his lifetime, Reynolds was already notorious for his love of technical and material experiments. Reynolds routinely “restored“ paintings and bought old masters, in order to study their paint structure, occasionally by stripping away all the paint layers.
The condition of the Susanna painting is very good because it was painted on tropical wood. According to Kleinert and Laurenze Landsberg there was therefore no necessity for Reynolds to restore it. The reworking cannot have been a repair: Reynolds must have intended to improve it. Perhaps Reynolds intended to make the painting more „rembrandtesque“ in accordance with the 18th century conception of that term.
The collaboration with the Berlin Gemäldegalerie will be continued for the presentation of more Rembrandt paintings on The Rembrandt Database.