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Throughout history, art has served as a means of graphically expressing abstract or concrete aspects of nature, life, and humanity. Encompassing numerous fields, art has emerged and evolved alongside humanity as a dynamic marker characterized by its various periods and movements. Painting, a form of artistic expression, originated in early communities and has persisted throughout history. The art of painting, which serves as a record of early cultures and provides illustrations of life and cultural practices, has undergone changes over time. Painting underwent a paradigm shift during the New Age, liberating itself from the constraints imposed by the palace and the church. This newfound freedom allowed for innovative approaches that embraced a scientific and optimistic worldview. The Baroque Period, a post-Renaissance era characterized by a new perspective, witnessed a prolific output of artistic masterpieces. Furthermore, the artists placed particular emphasis on intricate detailing, ornate embellishments, and deliberate exaggeration in the images employed, in addition to fundamental components such as light and shadow, composition, and balance. Rembrandt, a prominent figure in the art history, is recognized for his distinctive Baroque style as a Dutch portrait painter during the Baroque Period. He pioneered and inspired many painters as a portraitist, group portraitist, and engraver. The present study aims to learn more about the Baroque Period and Rembrandt, to analyze the characteristic features of the Baroque Period in the works of the artist, and to explore the works in terms of form and expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article reports on the discovery of pararealgar and semi-amorphous pararealgar in Rembrandt's masterpiece The Night Watch. A large-scale research project named Operation Night Watch was started in 2019. A variety of non-invasive analytical imaging techniques, together with paint sample research, has provided new information about Rembrandt's pigments, materials, and techniques as well as the current condition of the painting. Macroscopic X-ray fluorescence, macroscopic X-ray powder diffraction and reflectance imaging spectroscopy identified the presence of arsenic sulfide pigments and degradation products of these pigments in the doublet sleeves and embroidered buff coat worn by Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch (central figure to the right of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq). Examination by light microscopy of two paint samples taken from this area shows a mixture of large sharp-edged tabular yellow and orange to red pigment particles, and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray analysis identified these particles as containing arsenic and sulfur. Using micro-Raman spectroscopy, the yellow particles were identified as pararealgar, and the orange to red particles as semi-amorphous pararealgar. Synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction allowed visualization of the presence of multiple degradation products associated with arsenic sulfides throughout the paint layer. The discovery of pararealgar and semi-amorphous pararealgar is a new addition to Rembrandt's pigment palette. To contextualize our findings and to hypothesize why, how, and where Rembrandt obtained the pigments, we studied related historical sources. A comprehensive review of historical sources gives insight into the types of artificial arsenic sulfides that were available and suggests that a broader range of arsenic pigments could have been available in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century than previously thought. This is supported by the use of a very similar mixture of pigments by Willem Kalf (1619–1693), a contemporary artist based in Amsterdam. Together with the condition of the particles in the paint cross sections, this brings us to the conclusion that Rembrandt intentionally used pararealgar and semi-amorphous pararealgar, together with lead–tin yellow and vermilion, to create an orange paint.

This article reports on the discovery of pararealgar and semi-amorphous pararealgar in Rembrandt's masterpiece The Night Watch. A large-scale research project named Operation Night Watch was started in 2019. A variety of non-invasive analytical imaging techniques, together with paint sample research, has provided new information about Rembrandt's pigments, materials, and techniques as well as the current condition of the painting. Macroscopic X-ray fluorescence, macroscopic X-ray powder diffraction and reflectance imaging spectroscopy identified the presence of arsenic sulfide pigments and degradation products of these pigments in the doublet sleeves and embroidered buff coat worn by Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch (central figure to the right of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq). Examination by light microscopy of two paint samples taken from this area shows a mixture of large sharp-edged tabular yellow and orange to red pigment particles, and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray analysis identified these particles as containing arsenic and sulfur. Using micro-Raman spectroscopy, the yellow particles were identified as pararealgar, and the orange to red particles as semi-amorphous pararealgar. Synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction allowed visualization of the presence of multiple degradation products associated with arsenic sulfides throughout the paint layer. The discovery of pararealgar and semi-amorphous pararealgar is a new addition to Rembrandt's pigment palette. To contextualize our findings and to hypothesize why, how, and where Rembrandt obtained the pigments, we studied related historical sources. A comprehensive review of historical sources gives insight into the types of artificial arsenic sulfides that were available and suggests that a broader range of arsenic pigments could have been available in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century than previously thought. This is supported by the use of a very similar mixture of pigments by Willem Kalf (1619–1693), a contemporary artist based in Amsterdam. Together with the condition of the particles in the paint cross sections, this brings us to the conclusion that Rembrandt intentionally used pararealgar and semi-amorphous pararealgar, together with lead–tin yellow and vermilion, to create an orange paint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, art history has repeatedly renewed interest in a number of the most important artists of various periods, especially Rembrandt. Research, both on his art and on the large legacy of knowledge and documentation concerning his working processes, should add to his influence on certain of his followers and among Bulgarian artists. Rembrandt's plastic and professional approach is expectedly and unexpectedly found in dialogue with a number of our artists, such as Karl Yordanov, Acad. Iliya Petrov, Kiril Gyulemetov, Prof. Petar Chuklev, Yavora Petrova, and others. On the other hand, it is the innovativeness of the Dutch master that adds certainty to the paths to modernity, which is highlighted in a number of notes, diaries, and interviews of our artists, including those of Prof. . Lyubomir Dalchev, Boris Angelushev, and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the analysis of Osip Mandelstam’s poem “Like Chiaroscuro’s Martyr Rembrandt” (1937). It tries to interpret the central enigmatic images (“the eye of the falcon’s feather,” “hot caskets at midnight in the harem”), which have not been satisfactorily explained to date, and providing an example of a holistic interpretation of the text. The analysis also touches on the question of “light and shade” (or chiaroscuro) and the category of time and muteness. Critically reviewing the works of T. Langerak, O. Ronen, M.L. Gasparov and I.Z. Surat, the author offers his own understanding of the poem as a poetic statement about art in general and its effect on humans.

Este ensayo es producto de una investigación en el campo de la teoría e historia del arte y se concentra en el análisis de la pintura inédita Escena de dormitorio (c.1985-86) del destacado escritor y pintor chileno Adolfo Couve Rioseco (1940-1998). La obra salió a la luz en 2021, y su estudio no solo permite abordar problemas relativos a autoría, data, técnica y gestos pictóricos, sino también comentar los espacios domésticos y las relaciones familiares del autor. Sobre todo, permite profundizar en sus filiaciones visuales; en este caso puntual, su interés por óleos tales como Jeremías lamentando la destrucción de Jerusalén (1630) de Rembrandt van Rijn; una de las cuatro versiones de El muchacho del chaleco rojo (c.1889-90) de Paul Cézanne, y las naturalezas muertas del italiano Giorgio Morandi, a partir de los cuales probablemente Couve construyó el cuadro hasta ahora no documentado que aquí se somete a escrutinio.

During the Eighty Years' war (1568-1648), amidst the struggle for the independence of the Netherlands from the Spanish Empire, a 26-year-old Rembrandt created one of 17th-century's masterpieces painting. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, painted in 1632, is a widely recognized masterpiece known for its detailed portrayal of the human anatomy, as well as for the amount of information available about its content and the moment immortalized. At the center of the piece lies the dissection of the left forearm illustrating muscles and tendinous structures such as the flexor digitorum superficialis, the abductor digiti minimi, the flexor pollicis longus tendon, the Camper's chiasma, and seemingly nervous structures. The painting embodies the pursuit of scientific progress, empirical confirmation, and the conveyance of knowledge. This article focuses on analyzing the accuracy of the forearm dissection as well as the potential anatomical errors in the structures painted by Rembrandt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty's late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kazimierz Wójtowicz (born 1948) is a contemporary priest-poet. In his lyrical works, he constantly develops the biblical theme of Emmaus. He has written over 80 songs about this theme. This article discusses six ekphrases written by Kazimierz Wójtowicz about paintings by baroque masters, depicting the scene that took place in Emmaus. These are the following poems: Caravaggio: Christ in Emmaus (1601), Diego Velázquez: Kitchen girl with a supper scene in Emmaus in the background (1618), Diego Velázquez: Supper in Emmaus (1620), Rembrandt: Christ in Emmaus (drawing, 1629), Rembrandt: Supper in Emmaus (1629) and Rembrandt: Christ in Emmaus (1648). Describing baroque canvases using the language of poetry, Wójtowicz draws attention primarily to the evangelical meaning of the paintings. Usually, he is interested in the dynamics of the scene, the emotionality of the painted characters, and the lively gestures of the apostles. He is somewhat less interested in the other baroque features of the paintings, incl. vivid colors, operating with light, contrasts. Rembrandt's ekphrase: Supper in Emmaus (1629) is based on an interesting concept consisting in a perfunctory treatment of the most important element of a work (in the opinion of art historians, which determines the uniqueness of a painting) and focusing on secondary motives. In the poems analyzed by Wójtowicz, only the baroque style resonates. The author diversifies the lyrical monologue with metaphors, antitheses, and biblical quotations, but artistic media appear with a moderate intensity. Wójtowicz's ekphrases are "baroque" because of the topic taken up, not because of the organization of the linguistic layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This month, I offer a poem, the third in a series, by Adele Ne Jame, a firstgeneration Lebanese American who has lived in Hawai'i since 1969. She and her artist daughter, Melissa Chimera, served as the 2022 Mikhail Series Lecturers at the University of Toledo. The accompanying image is by her daughter. The poem presented, "Rembrandt's Good Samaritan, Then and Now," considers two etchings by Dutch Baroque painter and printmaker Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). A prolific master in three media, Rembrandt produced about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand drawings. He was one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art, and arguably, the greatest etcher that ever lived. Perhaps, most importantly, Rembrandt was an expert story teller, able to craft a narrative in works on canvas and on paper. Here, inspired by the narratives of two etchings, the poet comments on the artist's life, marked by suffering and loss; his artistic innovation; and his message of compassion and humility that is particularly relevant to today's healthcare professionals. Rembrandt "suffered / the loss of three children," who died shortly after birth, and he lost his beloved wife Saskia to tuberculosis after just nine years of marriage. While Rembrandt gained financial success through his artwork, he "died poor," and like Mozart, was buried "in an unmarked grave." Yet, he was "the master who harnessed the forces of light and dark," perfecting the technique of chiaroscuro, and "who plunged so deeply into the mysterious" that post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) "thought him a magician." The son of a miller, Rembrandt was born into humble beginnings and thus was sensitive to suffering, tolerated diversity, and deeply empathized with the human condition. He was a social outsider who associated with lowborn people, "happy in the company of workers and street people," and "wiped his dirty brushes on his clothes / not caring a whit what others might think." As an artist, he was a nonconformist, a revolutionary who flaunted the rules of the Academy in favor of a psychological realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aloïs Riegl’s elucidations of visual particulars in his Dutch Group Portrait of 1902 are not in contrast to but rather inform his theory of the development of group portraiture. Riegl sought to explain the Kunstwollen or ‘will of art’ of Dutch group portraits, what they seek to do as art. Despite his errors, his approach is applicable to current interpretations, above all the riddle of Rembrandt’s Staalmeesters, and can thus serve, in a cumulative art historiography, as a means of ‘Vienna schooling’ Dutch art scholarship. Building on Riegl’s analysis, this paper proposes that after reaching an impasse in both his group sketch for and first painted composition of his Staalmeesters, Rembrandt made portrait studies of two sample masters in their account book, and revised his composition to show them responding to his drawings and looking out at him. He thereby embedded portraiture (Riegl’s ‘external unity’) at the heart of his narrative (‘internal unity’). As in his earlier group portraits, he displaced speech by sight and text by image, achieving what Riegl identified as his goal of interfusing the psyches or souls of the figures and the beholder, making them part of a moving, seeing, thinking whole. Rembrandt reflected on the development of his tradition and his own paintings, making his task in the process of portraiture into the subject of his painting, and thereby redeemed his relation to his tradition.

The paper discusses the ‘discovery’ of Mughal painting at Vienna and the pioneering research dedicated to it from the 1920s onwards by Josef Strzygowski and his circle. The focus is on the so-called Millionenzimmer at Schönbrunn Palace which was decorated in the 1760s under Maria Theresa with collages made of cut-up paintings of the Mughal empire. The dialectics of this unique decoration scheme are unravelled which emerges as a destructive and at the same time emphatic appropriation of the ‘other’. An additional interest is provided by the connection to Rembrandt and Schellinks who copied Mughal miniatures for which the prototypes appear in the Millionenzimmer. The conclusion draws a parallel to Mughal artistic appropriations.

The Night Watch, painted in 1642 and on view in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is considered Rembrandt's most famous work. X‐ray powder diffraction (XRPD) mapping at multiple length scales revealed the unusual presence of lead(II) formate, Pb(HCOO)2, in several areas of the painting. Until now, this compound was never reported in historical oil paints. In order to get insights into this phenomenon, one possible chemical pathway was explored thanks to the preparation and micro‐analysis of model oil paint media prepared by heating linseed oil and lead(II) oxide (PbO) drier as described in 17th century recipes. Synchrotron radiation based micro‐XRPD (SR‐μ‐XRPD) and infrared microscopy were combined to identify and map at the micro‐scale various neo‐formed lead‐based compounds in these model samples. Both lead(II) formate and lead(II) formate hydroxide Pb(HCOO)(OH) were detected and mapped, providing new clues regarding the reactivity of lead driers in oil matrices in historical paintings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout her novels, Anne Rice comes and goes from simple impressions to complex considerations concerning paintings, poems, short stories, songs, and other artistic mediums. In some cases, such works may be ressignified throughout her prose. In this scenario, such a process may be read as intersemiotic translation. In her novel The Tale of the Body Thief, Rice approaches a painting by Rembrandt, The Syndics of the Clothmakers Guild, as an object which mirrors Lestat's ultimate anguish: the problem of evil. Having the interarts studies as my theoretical background, I reckon that there is a creative and critic notion that guides Rice's artistic rereading's in "The Vampire Chronicles", a notion that Lestat calls The Savage Garden, which I conceived as an "imaginative design". By this means, I analyze The Tale of the Body Thief related to Rembrandt's painting. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored how people look at The Night Watch (1642), Rembrandt's masterpiece. Twenty-one participants each stood in front of the painting for 5 min, while their eyes were recorded with a mobile eye-tracker and their thoughts were verbalized with a think-aloud method. We computed a heatmap of the participants' attentional distribution using a novel markerless mapping method. The results showed that the participants' attention was mainly directed at the faces of the two central figures, the bright mascot girl in the painting, and detailed elements such as the apparel of the key figures. The eye-movement analysis and think-aloud data also showed that participants' attention shifted from the faces of the key figures to other elements of the scene over the course of the 5 min. Our analyses are consistent with the theory that Rembrandt used light and texture to capture the viewer's attention. Finally, the robustness of the eye-tracking method was demonstrated by replicating the study on a smaller replica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I take a critical look at the 'cultural archive', one of the key concepts in White Innocence (2016), for which Gloria Wekker drew methodological inspiration from Edward Said, who coined the term in Culture and Imperialism (1993), and from Ann Laura Stoler's observations on the 'ethnography of the archive' in Along the Archival Grain (2009). Drawing on debates in history, cultural analysis and memory studies, and using Rembrandt van Rijn's painting 'Two African Men' as case study, I wish to elaborate on Wekker's observations on what the cultural archive as a conceptual tool allows us to see about Dutch history, memory and society, and what it obscures. Despite its obvious advantages for recognizing and acknowledging structures of coloniality still present in Dutch society, I plead for a more historically grounded approach to the cultural archive that may enhance the productivity of future research on, or in, the cultural archive in order to identify further possibilities of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four topic areas are covered in this issue of Health and Social Care Chaplaincy: (i) healthcare chaplaincy, spiritual care and disability, (ii) COVID-19, (iii) deuterocanonical considerations of the "Angel Raphael" and (iv) the artwork of Rembrandt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lev Manovich, Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab and Presidential Professor at the City University of New York, explores some of the societal notions surrounding AI and creativity. He exposes certain myths that have grown up around this discourse and posits a wider, more interesting emerging reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalism and Imaginary. The cave, the labor and the algorithm. The aim of this paper is to discuss the controversial relationship between capitalism and imaginary. Using Adorno’s concept of constellation in science, we shall underline different kind of relationship between those. we will try to identify vital conceptual nodes that can illuminate the relationship between capitalism and the imaginary. In the first part we discuss address the attention to two different perspectives aboutof the interrelationship dichotomy between capitalism and imaginary. Starting from Bataille’s reflection on Lascaux’s wall painting, we highlight focus on the difference between instrumental activity and expressive activity, while in a social and historical perspective, we pay attention on the irreconcilable contradiction of these activities that emerge with the modern concept of labor. In the second part, we analyze a case study - an algorithm called “The Next Rembrandt” - in order discuss aesthetical and cultural condition of the contemporary capitalism. How we show in the last part, the aesthetical and cultural dilemmas not only offer us a possible link between capitalism and imaginary but, at the same time, allow us to face up the ethical dimension of contemporary cultural logic of capitalism.

Faysal Tabbarah is Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Architecture at the American University of Sharjah and co‐founder of design studio Architecture + Other Things (A+OT). Here he explores alternative forms through the painterly, the natural environment and the architectonic with the aim of developing new and original ways of constructing material that can be used for building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract As part of the NWO Science4Arts REVISRembrandt project (2012–2018), novel chemical imaging techniques were developed and applied to the study of Rembrandt’s late experimental painting technique (1651–1669). One of the unique features in his late paintings is his abundant use of smalt: a blue cobalt glass pigment that he often combined with organic lake pigments, earth pigments and blacks. Since most of these smalt-containing paints have discolored over time, we wanted to find out more about how these paintings may have originally looked, and what the role of smalt was in his paint. This paper reports on the use of smalt in complex pigment mixtures in Rembrandt’s Homer (1663), Mauritshuis, The Hague. Macroscopic X-ray fluorescence imaging (MA-XRF) assisted by computational analysis, in combination with SEM-EDX analysis of paint cross-sections, provides new information about the distribution and composition of the smalt paints in the painting. Paint reconstructions were carried out to investigate the effect of different percentages of smalt on the overall color, the drying properties, translucency and texture of the paint. Results show that the influence of (the originally blue) smalt on the intended color of the paint of the Homer is minimal. However, in mixtures with high percentages of smalt, or when combined with more transparent pigments, it was concluded that the smalt did produce a cooler and darker paint. It was also found that the admixture of opaque pigments reduced the translucent character of the smalt. The drying tests show that the paints with (cobalt-containing) smalt dried five times faster compared to those with glass (without cobalt). Most significantly, the texture of the paint was strongly influenced by adding smalt, creating a more irregular surface topography with clearly pronounced brushstrokes. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used as an additional tool to reveal differences in translucency and texture between the different paint reconstructions. In conclusion, this study confirmed earlier assumptions that Rembrandt used substantial amounts of smalt in his late paintings, not for its blue color, but to give volume and texture to his paints, to deepen their colors and to make them dry faster.

Exhibition: Rembrandt and the portrait in Ámsterdam, 1590-1670, National Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza, February 1 to May 24, 2020. Review about the book: Norbert Middelkoop (ed.) y R. Ekkart (col.), Rembrandt y el retrato en Ámsterdam, 1590-1670, (Madrid: Lucam, 2020, 262 pp.) (ISBN: 978-84-17173-39-5

Knowledge of 1p/19q-codeletion and IDH1/2 mutational status is necessary to interpret any investigational study of diffuse gliomas in the modern era. While DNA sequencing is the gold standard for determining IDH mutational status, genome-wide methylation arrays and gene expression profiling have been used for surrogate mutational determination. Previous studies by our group suggest that 1p/19q-codeletion and IDH mutational status can be predicted by genome-wide somatic copy number alteration (SCNA) data alone, however a rigorous model to accomplish this task has yet to be established. In this study, we used SCNA data from 786 adult diffuse gliomas in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to develop a two-stage classification system that identifies 1p/19q-codeleted oligodendrogliomas and predicts the IDH mutational status of astrocytic tumors using a machine-learning model. Cross-validated results on TCGA SCNA data showed near perfect classification results. Furthermore, our astrocytic IDH mutation model validated well on four additional datasets (AUC = 0.97, AUC = 0.99, AUC = 0.95, AUC = 0.96) as did our 1p/19q-codeleted oligodendroglioma screen on the two datasets that contained oligodendrogliomas (MCC = 0.97, MCC = 0.97). We then retrained our system using data from these validation sets and applied our system to a cohort of REMBRANDT study subjects for whom SCNA data, but not IDH mutational status, is available. Overall, using genome-wide SCNAs, we successfully developed a system to robustly predict 1p/19q-codeletion and IDH mutational status in diffuse gliomas. This system can assign molecular subtype labels to tumor samples of retrospective diffuse glioma cohorts that lack 1p/19q-codeletion and IDH mutational status, such as the REMBRANDT study, recasting these datasets as validation cohorts for diffuse glioma research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how an expanding population of artists in the seventeenthcentury Dutch Republic was connected artistically, and how such connections were translated into artistic innovations that fuelled the rapid flourishing of Dutch arts and the art market. It does so by conceptualising and visualising an art-historical network of iconography that, for the first time, connects artists not through social relations but through shared subject matters. Using network analysis, this study revisits the definition of product innovations used by the socio-economic art historian John Michael Montias. It further demonstrates that painters' choices of subject matter, styles, and qualities were often unrelated while artists' thematic connections had little to do with their social relations and the location of their residence. Rather, the choices of subject matter were subject to market forces and rooted deeply in an artist's ability, ambition, and marketing strategy. Lastly, this article visualises the artistic network implied in Rembrandt's rivals by Eric Jan Sluijter, which helps explain the breakaway success of the Dismissal of Hagar paintings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medallions devoted to Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Ribera are a major collection of texts within Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s entire output. Through them, he proved that he was able to write a moving text about painting while avoiding both the academic tone and flaunting his knowledge, as well as the dangers of ekphrasis transforming too often into irksome detailed inventories of the elements of a painter’s presentation. The decision to refer to these texts as medallions was equally a genological concept and a clever hedge, and a starting point for a discussion on the ambiguity of the very notion of a medallion. Herling-Grudziński would not have been himself if he had abandoned autobiographical reflections. When considering artists and their works ‘from aside’, he multiplied assumptions, proposed apocryphal versions of some biographical threads, and formulated bold unverifiable hypotheses – this was because he sided with a literary story, not an academic discourse.

The diaphragm wall and the open caisson represent two main competitive technologies used in the construction of underground objects. In modern times, diaphragm walls are primarily applied for large-size objects, with open caissons being preferred in the case of small-sized ones. Currently, objects of this type are designed mainly for sewage treatment plants and detention reservoirs. Their construction involves highly labour-intensive processes. During the execution of works unforeseen negative effects are observed to occur. During the underground objects construction the most common phenomena are: deviations from the vertical (tilt), sagging, sinking below the designed level, cracking, scratches or leakage through the wall. The purpose of the paper is to classify undesired risk factors emerging in the process of underground objects construction and selection of the optimal technological and material solution for municipal facilities. The implementation of this task involved the selection of Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods, taking into account the cause-effect rating, as the mathematical apparatus. The Ratio Estimation in Magnitudes or deciBells to Rate Alternatives which are Non-DominaTed (REMBRANDT) method was applied. The research proved that it is possible to analytically assess unforeseen risk factors conducive to emergency situations during the implementation of underground objects, using the REMBRANDT method.

In the artistic lexicon, we sometimes come across archetypal forms. Among these there is also the artist's hand; compared to the hand of a divine demiurge, it reveals a theoretical approach to the artistic identity. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the hand is the visual focus of the self-portraits painted by Parmigianino and Artemisia Gentileschi and, as allegorical apparition, it appears in Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1636) and even, much more recently, in the graphic work by Hinsberg (2004). Géricault’s anatomic left-hand drawing (1823) is a metaphorical fragment and, in the 20th century, it returns in the signature-pictures by Duchamp, Fontana and Boetti.

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The essay grew out of an issue I had been pondering for some time and is an attempt to gain an insight into a secret Van Gogh was eager to discover while comparing himself as an artist with “Rembrandt, the magician”. Van Gogh was convinced that art could succeed where religion had failed. Moreover, there was no need for art to be directly connected with Christianity as a system. For Van Gogh, in this frame of mind, the art of “Japan”, as exemplified by the genre of ukiyo-e, and such like, provided hope. Rembrandt, too, saw oriental art not so much as art in itself but as a method of expressing one’s innermost feelings that were still lacking in European art, and that were, moreover, understood as a source of inspiration for the creation of a new, ideal form of human compassion. Similarly, Van Gogh's art was distilled into a more essential form of itself as his inspiration from the ukiyo-e genre gradually deepened and became more internalized. Therefore, this is something he shared with Rembrandt and related him more closely to the oriental art apparent in work of the Old Master.

Este estudo tem por objetivo identificar alguns conceitos básicos da Psicologia Analítica na pintura de Rembrandt, inspirada na parábola “O filho pródigo”, retirada da Bíblia – Evangelho de Lucas, capítulo XV, versículos 1-32. Consideraram-se os preceitos da Psicologia Analítica sobre individuação, consciente, inconsciente pessoal, coletivo, anima, animus, self, persona, símbolos, complexos, complexo paterno, processo de individuação, arquétipos e sua correlação com a expressão artística religiosa. A metodologia consistiu em uma revisão bibliográfica nos sites do portal CAPES e Scielo dos últimos cinco anos, artigos, livros da abordagem da psicologia analítica. Em síntese, ficou reiterado que há contribuição das artes no processo da Psicologia Analítica, pois tanto a Parábola do Filho Pródigo quanto a pintura de Rembrandt ilustram a codificação simbólica no processo de individuação do homem. Desse modo, compreendeu-se que o ser humano é um conjunto em transição contínua, em processo de aprimoramento incessante sob todos os aspectos considerados (filosóficos, sociológicos, espirituais, éticos, morais). Assim, nesse processo ininterrupto de transformação, surgem complexidades nas quais alguns conflitos desaparecem e outros permanecem na sua história antropológica, ancestral, como perspectivas de apreensão, conquistas que devem ser logradas.

Abstract Late paintings of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) offer intriguing problems for both art historians and conservation scientists. In the research presented here, the key question addressed is whether observed stylistic differences in paint handling can be correlated with material differences. In Saul and David, in the collection of the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, NL, the stylistic differences between the loose brushwork of Saul’s cloak and the more detailed depiction of his turban and the figure of David have been associated with at least two painting stages since the late 1960s, but the attribution of each stage has been debated in the art historical literature. Stylistic evaluation of the paint handling in the two stages, based on magnified surface examination, is further described here. One of the research goals was to determine whether the stylistic differences could be further differentiated with macroscale and microscale methods of material analysis. To address this, selected areas of the painting having pronounced stylistic differences were investigated with two macroscopic chemical imaging methods, X-ray fluorescence and reflectance imaging spectroscopies. The pigments used were identified and their spatial distribution was mapped. The mapping results show that the passages rendered in more detail and associated stylistically with the first painting stage, such as the orange-red color of David’s garment or the Greek key design in Saul’s turban, were painted with predominately red ochre mixed with vermilion. The regions of loose, bold brushwork, such as the orange-red slashing strokes in the interior of Saul’s cloak, associated with the second painting stage, were painted with predominately red ochre without vermilion. These macroscale imaging results were confirmed and extended with scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM–EDX) analysis of three cross-sections taken from regions of stylistic differences associated with the two painting stages, including one sample each from the right and left sleeve of David, and one from the interior of Saul’s cloak. SEM–EDX also identified a trace component, barium sulfate, associated with the red ochre of the second stage revisions. Combining mapping information from two spectroscopic imaging methods with localized information from microscopic samples has clearly shown that the stylistic differences observed in the paint handling are affiliated with differences in the chemical composition of the paints.

In paper, the ability to use of the biological early warning systems, in tap water quality biomonitoring was analyzed, based on multiple-criteria decision analysis. Five groups of organisms (invertebrates, fishes, algae, fungi and bacteria) were analyzed for the sensitivity to disturbance, the area of use, the amount of detected components, the rate of reaction and the data interpretation. Both analyzes revealed, that invertebrates are the most sensitive bioindicators (49% AHP, 29% Rembrandt). The other organisms which are useful in BEWS systems are algae and fishes. More problematic may be systems based on fungi and bacteria.Both analysis Rembrandt, as well as analytic hierarchy process(AHP) have indicated the rate of reaction as the most important factor in BEWS. All of BEWS systems are focused on reduce the time required to obtain the information about pollution presence, because the standard monitoring of tap water quality, based on physical and chemical methods, are usually time consuming.

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Abstract This paper reports on how the application of macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) imaging, in combination with the re-examination of existing paint cross-sections, has led to the discovery of a new pigment in Rembrandt’s palette: artificial orpiment. In the NWO Science4Arts ‘ReVisRembrandt’ project, novel chemical imaging techniques are being developed and applied to the study of Rembrandt’s late paintings in order to help resolve outstanding questions and to gain a better understanding of his late enigmatic painting technique. One of the selected case studies is the Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as ‘The Jewish Bride’, dated c. 1665 and on view in the Rijksmuseum. During the re-installation of the Rijksmuseum in 2013, the picture was scanned using the Bruker M6 Jetstream MA-XRF scanner. The resulting elemental distribution maps made it possible to distinguish many features in the painting, such as bone black remains of the original hat (P, Ca maps), and the now discolored smalt-rich background (Co, Ni, As, K maps). The arsenic (As) map also revealed areas of high-intensity in Isaac’s sleeve and Rebecca’s dress where it could be established that it was not related with the pigment smalt that also contains arsenic. This pointed to the presence of a yellow or orange arsenic-containing pigment, such as realgar or orpiment that is not associated with the artist’s palette. Subsequent examination of existing paint cross-sections from these locations taken by Karin Groen in the 1990s identified isolated, almost perfectly round particles of arsenic sulfide. The round shape corresponds with published findings on a purified form of artificial orpiment glass obtained by dry processing, a sublimation reaction. In bright field, the particles characteristically exhibit a dark cross in the middle caused by internal light reflections. The results of additional non-invasive techniques (portable XRD and portable Raman) are discussed, as well as the implications of this finding and how it fits with Rembrandt’s late experimental painting technique.

When looking at two paintings, ostensibly by Rembrandt, is there an aesthetic difference in how these paintings are perceived if we know that one of the two paintings is a forgery? Most certainly, declared Nelson Goodman (1976). Knowledge of the difference would modify the aesthetic experience. When looking at Michelangelo’s Christ on the Cross, the result is arguably similar. What we see depends on what we know about Christ’s story. The same might also be said more generally about tragic narratives and their accompanying indicia. Awareness impacts viewers acutely. This is especially evident in curated Holocaust memorials, where the ghastly artifacts, and the unfathomable story lines, are intrinsic to their aesthetic force. This insight however is by no means limited to curated monuments. Learning that an artist, David Wojnarowicz for example, was a victim of inconceivable torment is no less critical to how their artworks are perceived. Our argument, in its totality, is that being informed is preferable to unknowing, and that knowing, however manifested, has the capacity of modifying visual perception.

In the past few years deep-learning AI neural networks have achieved major milestones in artistic image analysis and generation, producing what some refer to as ‘art.’ We reflect critically on some of the artistic shortcomings of a few projects that occupied the spotlight in recent years. We introduce the term ‘Zombie Art’ to describe the generation of new images of dead masters, as well as ‘The AI Reproducibility Test.’ We designate the problems inherent in AI and in its application to art history. In conclusion, we propose new directions for both AI-generated art and art history, in the light of these new powerful AI technologies of artistic image analysis and generation.

In order to develop an analytical tool to aid connoisseurs in authentication of paintings we introduce a digital computational technique based on luminosity histograms of high-resolution digitized images of paintings. This exploratory approach emerged from the widely-held hypothesis that every individual artist (master, student, copier, or forger) will tend to have a personal hand/eye spatial "signature" in shading and contrast (e.g., chiaroscuro and sfumato) that may be revealed and quantified by means of histogram statistics. A preliminary database library is built of amplitude histogram data of the digital images of authenticated works by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn against which copies and forgeries then are compared. It illuminates the individual chiaroscuro or spatial-blending characteristics of the master-created paintings to be analyzed. We show preliminary results from our analyses of 36 self-portraits that at various times have been attributed to Rembrandt and were chosen by us as a consequence of the prodigious historical, scientific, and stylistic scrutiny that have focused on these works in recent decades. Our statistical results demonstrate probative conformity for paintings that have been established as authentic self-portraits by Rembrandt and reveal statistical differences when compared to copies and forgeries as well as paintings of the Rembrandt workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay critically reads Simon Gikandi's Slavery and the Culture of Taste (2011) and poses questions about Gikandi's method of reading allegorically. By closely analyzing his discussion of the painting Two Africans by Rembrandt van Rijn in particular, and scrutinizing how Gikandi sometimes relies on historical and art-historical contextualization and at other moments does not, I argue that his interpretations of the past are up for debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]