Left: Workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn. Old Man with Gold Chain, about 1632–33. Private collection.
Right: Rembrandt van Rijn. Old Man with Gold Chain, 1631. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection.
Known for his ability to capture a captivating array of human emotions, Rembrandt van Rijn paid careful attention to the ways that facial expression, bodily movement, costume, lighting, and even his own style of painting could convey a feeling or a story. Especially powerful were his tronies (a Dutch term for “face”), a genre featuring single figure character studies that Rembrandt helped pioneer from the beginning of his career in the 1620s.
The Art Institute of Chicago’s Rembrandt tronie, Old Man with a Gold Chain from 1631, was so successful that it was copied in his own time, likely by one of the students in his workshop for the competitive Amsterdam art market. For the first time in almost four hundred years, the Art Institute has brought the original and copy back together. This talk seizes on the special opportunity to directly compare two paintings that achieve highly similar effects through different artistic means. It takes the design and materials of the subject’s costume, like his gold chain, as a starting point to explore how this copy came to be, why paintings like the original were so popular, and the relationship between the artist and his workshop at this pivotal early moment in his career.
About the speaker
Annie Correll is the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Curatorial Fellow in Painting and Sculpture of Europe and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She specializes in early modern northern European art and her dissertation explores the decorative arts found in Rembrandt van Rijn’s history scenes in connection with questions of materiality, craft, and natural philosophy. She has held positions at the Leiden Collection in New York, the Getty Museum, and the prints and drawings gallery David Tunick, Inc.
What to Expect
This program will take place in a single gallery on the second floor of the Michigan Avenue building and will last about 45 minutes. The program will involve close looking and discussion of artworks in the Painting and Sculpture of Europe collection area. There will be folding stools for seating. ASL interpretation and/or assisted listening devices are available upon request at [email protected]. Assisted listening devices are limited and available on a first come, first served basis. Requests must be made at least two weeks in advance.
