form of the painting. The spatial construction of the
Boston picture has in common with the Museum's draw-
ing the right-hand vanishing point determined by the ea-
sel and painting as well as the way in which the space of
the studio echoes that of the painting depicted, which in
this case is rectangular. The Boston panel, as noted by the
Rembrandt Research Project (Bruyn et al. 1982, p. 211),
marked a new departure for Rembrandt in the creation
of powerful and evocative spatial effects; he appears to
have continued this early interest in the creation of an in-
tegrated, dynamic spatial continuum in the Getty draw-
ing. Its somewhat diagrammatic character suggests that
he might have studied picture books on perspective such
as Instruction en la science de perspective by Hendrik Hon-
dius (1625).
- Generally believed to be in a seventeenth-century hand, it
may stand for "Rembrandt" or be the mark of an unknown
collector, as noted by Stampfle (1980), pp. 99-100, under no.
68, andj. Giltay, De Tekeningen van Rembrandt en Zijn School in
het Museum Boymans-van Beuningen (Rotterdam, 1988), pp. 52,
under no. 9, n. i; 300, under no. 170, n. i.
- According to van de Wetering (1976, pp. 26-31), the draw-
ing shows Lievens's reputed procedure of beginning by making
a rough sketch in paint directly on the canvas and then devel-
oping the salient forms arising from this sketch—in other
words basing his methods on chance—and the Boston painting
shows Rembrandt himself viewing his panel from a distance,
forming a mental image of the whole before starting to work.
242 DUTCH SCHOOL • REMBRANDT
