Original subtitles

Rembrandt is perhaps the most familiar face in Western Art. He painted, sketched and

etched it over and over again, as a way of exploring the range of human expression and emotion.

And as a way of chronicling a life-lived and a body-growing old. More than any other artist,

Rembrandt makes us aware of our own mortality, striking a chord which seems both timeless and universal.

Rembrandt Van Ryan was born in 1600 here in Leiden, then a prosperous university town in Holland's

second city. He was the son of a thriving miller and the eighth of nine children.

Rembrandt brothers became artisans, so much he worked at the family mill. But Rembrandt himself showed

academic promise, and so, in 1620 at the age of 40, he enrolled here at Leiden's Prestige

University. But it soon became clear that his interests lay elsewhere and he left the study

art. For three years, he was apprentice to a local painter in Leiden.

Then, in 1625, he left for Amsterdam, where he polished off his training with a Stint in the

studio of Peter Lastman, who introduced Rembrandt to the styles and ideas of the Italian Renaissance.

Six months later, at the age of 20, Rembrandt returned to Leiden and set up a studio with fellow

artist and rival Jan Levens. Rembrandt's earliest studies were of his family, faces fascinated

him, especially those of elderly people, and the characters in his own neighborhood. He drew hundreds

of these heads and incorporated them as characters in his oil paintings. Some of the drawings

were also sold as completed works of art, or made into engravings, and marketed as inexpensive

prints. But the face which fascinated him most and from which he learned most,

and which became the central vehicle for his most profound painting, was his own.

A Miss Little Gem of a Self-Portrait painted in 1629 is one of the earliest of a whole sweep

that ran for the next 44 years of his career. There were over 75 self-portraits made

that one art historian's estimated represents about 10% of Rembrandt's total output.

When he first approached this painting, it seems as if Rembrandt hasn't paid that much attention to

the detail, but look closely and you see the way that paint's been stabbed onto create the rough

of his collar and how delicate it is the hair is painted, and how not only is he using the brush

end of the brush, but the sharp end is to slice these little curls that amplify and make the light

on his head. But the crucial thing of course is the eyes. You can barely make out his eyes,

but there they are dark and piercing, and this is one of a series of portraits where sometimes

we see the eyes sometimes they're totally shaded, and it's a ziffy's playing a game of cat and mouse

with himself and with us. Now you see me, now you don't.

In the Netherlands artists use the self-portrait in a variety of ways. Someone designed for promotion

the artist as gentleman. Others were for fun. The artist dressed up in costume.

Rembrandt's self-portrait show both.

In 1632, Rembrandt moved his studios from sleepy lighten to here, Amsterdam, the center of the

recently founded Dutch Republic, which was promoting a culture of tolerance. There was a

rapidly decreased. However, on the upside, Amsterdam was boomed down.

Ships came in from the east, on their way out to the Americas, and the port was full of

people trading various commodities, wool, silk, rice, timber, grain, and so on. It was also a boat

building center, and a place where maps were made. Consequently, a new wealthy urban middle class

emerged. They were building houses, they had plenty of disposable income, which meant they wanted

paintings. Rembrandt moved in with an entrepreneur called Van Allenburg.

Rembrandt painted Van Allenburg Delt. Their unconventional arrangement meant that Rembrandt

wasn't constrained by the usual restrictions of an artistic guild, and was free to do a variety of

work. Within a year of arriving in Amsterdam, at the age of 26, Rembrandt received a commission from

the Guild of Surgeons to paint this picture, and it still takes your breath away. It's called

the Anatomy lesson of Doctor Top, and features the eminent doctor there in the center, performing

a dissection on a dead human body. Anatomy was common enough at this time. An annually,

there was a public anatomy that in some ways provided a kind of garrish entertainment.

They were able to buy tickets and spend the day watching. We know, in fact, that this was a criminal,

so he was convicted and executed on 31 January 1632, the same day that the dissection took place

in front of the Amsterdam public. In other words, you needed a fresh body. It might look slightly

garrish when we first look at it, but in fact, Doctor Top would have started with the stomach,

the guts, the intestines, and that would have made for a very messy picture. I don't think it's

in the interest of decorum that Rembrandt is not showing us that. I think he wants us to focus on the

tendons of the arm, because this is about human dexterity. And if you look, what he's doing is

cutting away at the tendons, revealing them, but at the same time, demonstrating what the real

left hand of the human figure can do when it's alive, so it's death and life, and showing

those mechanics, but there are other things happening too. He shows us seven other imminent

surgeons, and so this is a group portrait, but it's so much more dynamic than standard images

of anatomy classes, where the surgeons are all lined up frontally looking out of the canvas

at a corpse that's there in the front of the canvas, because Rembrandt puts the body at an angle,

but he also composes the surgeons in this amazing arrowhead formation, so focuses as

all in on a scene that, of course, is amplified by Rembrandt's wonderful use of light and darkness.

The anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicholas Tulf made Rembrandt's name in Amsterdam. He started to receive

many commissions for portraits of the city's well to do, traders, naval officers, and figures

of civic importance. At the age of 33, in the prime of life, this self-portrait shows a man who's

obviously made it. To enhance his status, Rembrandt dresses up in clothes which belonged to a

bagon era, as if he's already casting himself as a distinguished old master.

Hello big in Amsterdam, Rembrandt's still felt that he was painting in the shadow of his

older, more famous contemporary, Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens lived 18-mile south in Catholic Antwerp,

and his work was held in higher steam by all the major courts of Europe.

Back in the Netherlands, Rembrandt got his chance to compete with Rubens when he received this

mission for a series of pictures exploring the passion of Christ.

Painted during the 1630s for the Governor of the Netherlands, these small panels were designed

for private contemplation and show scenes from the life and crucifixion of Christ.

It's this panel which is the most interesting, and which we can directly compare with Rubens'

great work that is sent from the cross, a vast older piece which hung in Antwerp Cathedral,

and to which Rembrandt directly alludes. Rubens shows the moment when Christ's body is taken

down from the cross, the stress is on action and reaction, all the figures have dramatic

expressions on their faces, and everybody seems to be wanting to touch the body of Christ itself,

which in the Catholic faith was a powerful symbol and at the heart of the Eucharist.

People ate the host that they believed to have been transformed

quite literally into the body of Christ. But here Rembrandt has an altogether different stress.

He simplifies, he strips down, the real power of the picture lies in these figures that surround

Christ's body, they're there as observers. They look at the tragedy, they're helpless,

but in good Protestant or Calvinistic terms, what Rembrandt is showing us are people who are

fundamental shift from the Catholic vision of Rubens. There's also a lovely neat twist that

you often find in Rembrandt's paintings, and if you look at the figure closest to Christ, holding

his arm in blue, look again at the frizzy hair, and those very distinctive if sometimes shaded eyes,

and what we have here is Rembrandt himself right at the heart of his picture.

His reputation continued to grow, and at the age of 28, he married Sasuke of on Allanberg,

the niece of his art dealer, who had good social connections, and quite a large inheritance.

In 1639, Rembrandt bought this house in a good district of the city.

He wanted an address that was worthy of his reputation.

Rembrandt house is now up to the public as a museum. It holds many of his etchings and sketches,

and serves as evidence of Rembrandt's personal fortune in the 1640s.

He began to indulge his passion for collecting on a large scale.

Not only did he own engravings by Raphael, Broggle, Rubens and Van Dyke, but he also

would buy objects that might feed his imagination, costumes, feathers, swords, sculptures,

even a lion's skin, an eclectic mixture of curiosities which would often turn up as props in his paintings.

Rembrandt painted prolifically in this house. His studio upstairs, and on the very top floor,

were more studios used by his pupils. He was a popular master and had numerous paying apprentices.

But despite his increasing success and recognition, his experience on the home front was tragic.

He ensasced here at lost three of their children when they were only weeks old.

Rembrandt also had lost his mother and his sister-in-law. In 1641, their fourth child,

Titus was born and survived. But less than a year later, when she was just 30,

Saskia herself died. However, the next 10 years of Rembrandt's life were to produce the most staggering

work of his career. In 1642, Rembrandt received an important commission to take part in the

prestigious decoration of the Banqueting Hall at the headquarters of the Civic Guard in Amsterdam.

Specifically, one capped in Franz Banningcock and his left tenant, William Ron Wright and Berg,

asked Rembrandt to paint a group portrait of their particular precinct guard.

And this is the result. But instead of painting people like in a school photograph or a

rather stiff group portrait, what Rembrandt does, explodes off the canvas. So wonderfully dramatic

frozen moment, with the whole militia seemingly about to step out towards us on the orders

of the captain on the left and his left tenant on the right. Van Wright and Berg is dressed very

elaborately in this shimmering golden tunic that seems to imply that he's the man in control.

He's certainly the most flamboyant figure. But in fact, there's a neat twist here.

He seems to be a rather vain man. And in fact, we're under no illusion as to who's really in control,

even though he's wearing a darker outfit, not least because of the red sash that's dramatically

cuts across his front. But also, because of the way his hand is held out, giving the order,

and the fact that it casts a shadow right across the left tenants front.

People admire very much the foreshortened hand that gives the order. It's a piece of real

painterly dexterity by Rembrandt. And it was admired from the moment the painting was unveiled.

It's an unorthodox painting, too. Each of the 16 figures behind the two offices,

paid a hundred guilders to Rembrandt to have their portraits painted and he brings them to life.

These members, remember, are the civic guard, a civic militia who come from all walks of life,

butchers, bakers, preachers, one or two aristocrats, who gather together for the common good

to defend their city. They're an amateur army rather than a professional one. And you get people

from all walks of life and different character types. On the left hand side, and Claude Rodd

comitly, in the helmet of an antique warrior, is a man with a shady past. His mirror image on the

other side, wearing black and white and that distinctive rough, is a Calvinist deacon, almost preaching

to the militia in front of him. The two girls, Claude in golden blue, the colours of this particular

brand of the civic guard, the Clevanie, with a chicken on their belt. The chicken wing is a symbol

of one of the emblems on the Clevanie's drinking cups. And then a dog, and then on the extreme

right, a drummer who's been hired for the day to beat the rhythm as the men march forward following

the orders of their commanders. It's comical, but it's also serious. It's also a fantastical

baroque composition, where the play of lightness and dark and this dynamism and movement

is usually associated with art in the south, proclaiming the counter-reformation, the values of

Catholic Church. This is how Rubens Rembrandt's great rival used the baroque. Here though,

he uses it to proclaim the idea of civic pride and civic virtue. This is about proclaiming

Amsterdam and its values. But with the final twist, the master self-portraitist puts himself

right at the heart of the picture. Just above the black hat of the captain, we see that distinctive

nose and those distinctive eyes looking off into the distance, and there's Rembrandt.

Rembrandt's vision and genius as an artist was undeniable, but his perfectly

psychological portraits began to draw some criticism. While his clients wanted just a snapshot

likeness to hang on their walls, Rembrandt wanted a delve deeper, and he was particularly demanding

of his sitters, making them pose for hours on end. New trends in art also dented his popularity,

the lighter tones and colorful strokes of Andike, Pusan and other French artists were in Vogue.

Many of Rembrandt's former pupils and imitators soon followed in this fashion, but their master

remains stubborn. Rembrandt seemed to turn in the opposite direction. From the mid-1640s onwards,

his work became increasingly introspective. During this period, he made more intimate

studies of people and landscapes, mastering the etchers' needle with great sensitivity.

In the years following Saskia's death, Rembrandt continued to live lavishly,

spending his former wife's inheritance, and with rumors beginning to circulate,

that he was dipping into his son Titus's share as well.

The boy's nurse made became his mistress, but when she pressed him to marry her,

Rembrandt had a scent of the poor house. From 1645, Hendrick Stoffels took over as Rembrandt's new lover.

20 years his junior, she lived in his household until she died, but they never married,

probably for fear of losing his first wife's inheritance.

When Hendrick was pregnant in 1654, she was summoned to the Calvinist church to answer the charge

that she had, quote, committed the acts of a hall with Rembrandt the painter.

She acknowledged the charge and was banned from communion.

Rembrandt's creative life was changing, too. His impasto became thicker and more uneven.

Some of his contemporaries ridiculed his style, and dismissed it as smearing.

This work shows why they might have been so shocked by his technique.

This is a real gem of a painting. Many artists were in thought, because of the presence of this

ornate robe in the background, that it was perhaps a biblical subject, the Old Testament

story of Susanna and the Elders, or maybe even a classical mythological story of Diana Baything.

But in fact, people now think that this is Hendrick Stoffels,

and that if you look at the way Rembrandt depicts this woman, the intimacy of vision that,

perhaps, it's a painting that he made for himself and for Hendrick,

and it's something that we really shouldn't see, what I like most about this image of Hendrick,

is that she seems totally self-presessed. She looks at her reflection and we can see part of it

and the water. But what's really radical about this painting is the technique and the way that Rembrandt

reduces it. There are elements of it, particularly her right hand and her left shoulder,

that are very sketchy and people say in fact that it's unfinished. But it is finished.

Rembrandt signs it and dates it. And artists still end often make the mistake that if an artist

veers away from the technique that they've established, there must be an aberration,

or this maybe even isn't my Rembrandt, and what he's doing is liberating himself from the constraints

of the fashion of the day. The other artists were trying to have a very finished surface to

their paintings, but Rembrandt is disobediently and joyfully unfinished, and there's something

provocative in that, but it also sets the tone for the remaining 15 or so years of his life.

Rembrandt began incurring heavy debts. He was spending vastly more than he had on his bizarre

collection of objects and art. He was constantly buying from sailorims, dealers,

peddlers, or sellers of old clothes. If he thought a piece of clothing was interesting enough,

he'd buy it and hang it on his wall, even if it was filthy. But with the economics slump hitting

the pockets of his patrons, Rembrandt's extravagance proved catastrophic. In 1656, his assets were

equidated, his curiosity sold, his paintings auctioned off. It was forced to move from his splendid

house to a much smaller one in a poorer working-class area. To enable Rembrandt to keep working

whilst bankrupt, Hendrik and his son Titus went into business as our dealers formally employing

the artist. A good deal is made of the fact that for the last 14 or 15 years of his life,

Rembrandt faced financial ruin. And some people claim that his reputation plummeted too,

but that isn't true. But there's no doubt that his life was relatively hard compared to how

it had been in the previous two or three decades. But I think what emerges from looking at his art,

his house and old man, he transcends the mundaneness of everyday life. And on a personal level for

me, it's nowhere more powerfully expressed than in this painting. This is called the Flaid Ox. It's painted

in 1655, the year of fact that he's forced to sell off his house and a lot of his studio content.

And in some ways, on a superficial level, it looks as if the old man is taking his revenge

on the world at large and on humanity by the savage and brutal way with which he depicts the

carcass of this ox. But look again, as always with Rembrandt, if you scratch beneath the skin or

the surface much more is happening. There's a young servant girl, peering round a door,

looking at this rotting carcass. And the symbolism is clear, isn't it? Young life,

meets aging, putrid death. And sometimes when I look at this painting, it does almost seem to stink.

But I think it's wonderfully ambiguous too, and that when I look at it on other occasions,

there's a freshness, almost as if Rembrandt has managed to beat some life back into this

ailing or dead corpse. And then you look at the way he's painted the corpse itself. And it's as

if he transformed his brush into a butcher's knife or machete. And he's hacked and prodded and

paired and gouged at the carcass. And then on other occasions, it looks like he's walled in it,

or smoothed it. It looks like a martyr sometimes, or some human corpse has had horrendous torture

done to it, suspended on an almost cross-like structure. And it seems to me that Rembrandt's career

has come back or almost come round full circle. Think of the anatomy lesson the doctor told.

Rembrandt the young curious individual in a relatively detached way, painting the dissection

and observing what a corpse is like from the inside. Here though, this is pure physical expression.

And so in the last phase of Rembrandt's life and career, what we see is in wrestling explicitly

with the big questions, mortality, life and death, and the confrontation of death. And the fact

this stuff of which Rembrandt is made and were all made, flesh and bone, eventually,

will decay and rot. Hendrik remained devoted to Rembrandt until her death in 1663.

Five years later, his only son Titus died of the plague. Rembrandt followed him in 1669,

and on the fourth of October, he was buried in a rented grave in the Vesta Kirk.

He left only his clothes and a few artist materials. But he also left an immense body of work

that has never been surpassed in its insight into the human condition. An artist who portrayed

himself and the world as it really was, rather than it might like to see itself, who could paint

something close to perfection, but who celebrated the idea of physical imperfection, whose art

reads as one painter put it recently, like a roadmap of human experience.