The Oil Painter's Bible - chapter 6
against one another for maximum visual impact and depth. Clues as to his choice of primer may be seen
in areas where he has used a sharpened brush handle to scratch through wet paint in order to indicate bits
of hair. This is evident in a very early self portrait, now in The Hague, and in many other portraits. The
primers and/or imprimaturas thus revealed show that he followed no one single procedure, but varied the
choices, based on the effect he was after. The scratching with a sharpened brush handle into wet paint was
one of his earlier innovations.
Not long afterward, he began building up the opaque passages in his lights more heavily, and
texturing them to take on the physical convolutions of the lighted surfaces of his subjects, most notably
the skin textures of male subjects, including himself. The texture was created, or at any rate, can be
duplicated, by applying the paint somewhat heavily with large brushes, then gently passing a large, dry,
soft hair brush over the surface of the wet paint, back and forth, until the desired texture is attained.
Rembrandt began to superimpose glazes of red over these textured passages when dry, then wipe them off
with a rag, leaving traces remaining in the low spots to create an even more convincing texture of rough
flesh. Someone, at some point, said you could pick up a Rembrandt portrait by the nose.
As he began to expand the effect of glazing over dried impasto to other textures as well, he devised a
method employing two whites; one for impasto and one for smoother passages. The impasto white was
faster drying, probably made so by the addition of egg (traces of protein, presumed to be from egg, have
been found in samples analyzed by conservation scientists), and ground glass, into the formulation. It was
very lean, and consisted mostly of white lead with a minimum of binder. He began applying it more and
more heavily as the first stage of a two (or more) stage operation which was finished with transparent
glazes and wiping, to create fantastic special effects, the most extreme example of which is the man's
glowing, golden sleeve in the painting referred to as "The Jewish Bride," in the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam. The brilliance of this effect cannot be gotten in any other way. He has used the same
technique on the bride's costume in the same painting, but here the underpainting is red, which is
deepened with a glaze of red lake, probably Carmine (Cochineal). The red carpet on the table in "The
Syndics of the Drapers' Guild" (sometimes called "The Dutch Masters"), also in the Rijksmuseum, is done
in much the same way. The underpaint appears to have been trowelled on with a knife or some sort of flat
stick, then sculpted before it dried.
In Lieutenant Ruytenburch’s uniform in "The Night Watch," Rembrandt used this method, but with
less heavy impasto, for the ornate brocade work. The wet underlayer was worked with sharpened brush
handles and other tools while soft, then allowed to dry before applying the darker glazes. By wiping the
glazes off as soon as they were applied, Rembrandt was able to create a bas relief effect of remarkable
three dimensionality as the glaze remained in the nooks and crannies. By glazing again, this time with
transparent yellows and/or browns, instead of Ivory Black, he gave the textures a rich, golden glow.
Scientific analyses carried out by the National Gallery, London, show that Rembrandt added body to
his glaze-like passages by mixing in a bit of chalk, which functions as an inert pigment essentially
transparent when mixed with oil, and ground glass, which was probably used primarily to accelerate
drying. The glass most likely would have contained lead and/or cobalt, both drying agents.
There has been a great deal of speculation as to what medium or media Rembrandt used, with most of
the theories stating that one resin or another had to have been a major component. It now appears that
these hypotheses may be in error. Recent studies of paint samples taken from a number of Rembrandt’s
paintings show no detectable resins. In most of the samples tested, only linseed oil was found, and walnut
oil in some of the whites and blues. In some cases some of the oil was “heat-bodied,” as in perhaps boiled
or sun-thickened linseed oil. It is probable that these were added to the paints in which he wanted a long
brushing quality, and in at least some of his glazes. The combination of polymerized oil and raw oil
produces a resin-like substance without the undesirable properties of resins. Reinforced with chalk for
body, and ground glass for faster drying and perhaps transparency, these appear to comprise Rembrandt’s
glazing media, as nearly as is discernible by the present level of scientific knowledge, which, it must be
noted, is subject to change at any time, as new discoveries are made. For paints intended to be blended
smoothly and opaquely, it is most likely that no medium was added, beyond the linseed or walnut oil in
which the pigments were ground.
Rembrandt had at least one life size jointed mannequin, on which he would pose the clothes of his
sitters. The mannequin, unlike a living person, would remain motionless for as long as Rembrandt needed
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