Sadness on Canvas

"I think personally our black citizens should get over [slavery]… by golly we're living in 2007," claimed Virginia Republican Delegate Frank Hargrove, debunking the very essence of artwork like “The Dutchman” by Moyo Okediji, painted in 1995 though still focusing on the lasting effects of slavery on today’s African Americans. When we usually see a painting, we first notice the medium, the space, the color choice, and the contrast within the painting and not the real meanings. These elements not only dictate our sensual perceptions but also our minds about what the artist tried to accomplish by using certain techniques. It should be no different when we view “The Dutchman.” This image not only evokes certain emotions about its historical content, namely the slave trade, but also challenges our senses with the line curvature and the coloring, not to mention its sheer size. Even without knowing what the objects in the painting represent, one can still decipher a deeper social meaning, based solely on its formal qualities, that screams of the injustices done to in the African slave trade that still endure today.

The ground medium, canvas, sends a definitive statement about the artwork. Canvas is not just use for painting, but also serves as the sails of some ships. This versatile material forces us to examine why the artist chose canvas over other mediums like wood or glass. The canvas represents the slave trade itself, binding the characters to the medium that depicts many scenes but just one instance of the suffering of the African Slave Trade. The canvas confines the subjects as the ships confined their human cargo. Canvas is a representative material of slavery because if it weren’t for canvas, the ships would not have been able to sail and this artwork would not have been painted. By choosing canvas as the medium to paint on, Okediji not only recognizes the significance canvas to the slave trade but also recognizes the finality of the moment he painted and how canvas truly locks the moment in time.

The paint media is also noteworthy. Okediji uses acrylic, which reflects the light. The acrylic paint could be symbolic of the shining light that the Americans saw slavery as. When looking directly at the painting, it appears glossy and somewhat fantastic because it is so shiny. Yet the glossy reflection gives the illusion of a happy scene, just as those Americans who owned slaves put on an air of contentment, while their slaves were miserable in their laborious lives. The texture is indicative of the false perceptions that surrounded the African slave trade. Everyone believed it was good, such as a glossy image might appear, but if one really looks at it, it is a horrible depiction of the plight of a people kidnapped and imprisoned in a foreign country. Looking at the texture alone, a somewhat cheerful scene appears. Once the real content of the painting is inspected, a despicable image emerges and dispels all illusory effects of the acrylic gleam.

Space, as a formal quality of “The Dutchman,” epitomizes the situation that the slaves dealt with on their voyage away from their home. All of the different scenes in the painting are combined into just one image, just as all the slaves packed into one ship like cargo. Each individual scene becomes indistinguishable as the image as a whole forms, so the viewer has to look hard to decipher one story from another. Okediji places a whole story inside of one painting and lets the space in between the scenes speak volumes about the compact trip that slaves endured. Though a ship ride from Africa to the Americas would have taken a couple of weeks or more, the trip for the Africans became one blur of hysterics that begins and ends brutally and quickly, leaving them dazed, just as the viewers of this painting may be if they take the painting as a whole instead of various scenes. Space remains pivotal in this painting simply because it emphasizes the confined living area the slaves encountered in each individual scene in the painting. If Okediji had chosen to paint just one particular scene from the ones he chose, the effect would not have been the same because there would have been too much space and the viewer would not get a complete idea of the restrictions forced on slaves while they were in transit.

The color choice, as noted in the online description of the painting, influences the interpretation and the social message of Okediji’s work. The colors, bright and vibrant, serve to explain the vivacity of life the slaves had before they left their native land. For a painting that uses very intricate shapes and designs, there are a limited number of colors. The limited color scheme, like the spacing, serves as a metaphor for the restrictions placed on Africans and later African Americans. Okediji sends a social commentary that can only be achieved through the intense yet limited colors he chose; the commentary being that the Africans maintained a resilient, vivid culture that the slave traders tried to inhibit. Okediji also used many shades of blue, indicative of the Atlantic and “the pain at the root of African American blues music.” The blue coloring brings about a sense of calm in most artwork, yet the color here represents the despair that slaves felt as they traversed the ocean. The water presented a constant threat to the slaves because they could drown or be thrown over. Now the color blue can be representative of the blues music genre that captures the intense pain still suffered by African Americans because of the blue ocean that took their ancestors from their rightful home. The use of the blue complements Okediji’s motivation behind this piece of artwork in that it suggests the plight of the Africans, not only in the past but also in the present.

Contrast plays an important role in this artwork. Looking at it from the left to the right, a story unfolds. The contrasting imagery employs several “elements of design to hold the viewer's attention and to guide the viewer's eye through the artwork.” The viewer looks at the contrast and is forced to follow the painting from the beginning of the slaves’ voyage to their sale. The contrasting imagery still maintains a cohesiveness that allows the painting to flow even though the shapes and subjects vary. Not a single scene pops out from the others, and yet they remain dissimilar because they have different subjects, be it drowning slaves or a Dutchman with his face turned. This cohesiveness in the face of the diverse scenes indicates the strength of the African people despite their toils. Okediji, with this contrast, states that his people will remain united though divided in different stages of life; in this case, each group of Africans undergoes a different stage of the Middle Passage between Africa and the Americas. No matter what happens to individual, contrasting Africans or African Americans, the spirit lives on.

Some may argue that Okediji’s painting simply manifests a shameful period of time from the perspective of a modern African American man and that it places too much blame on the Dutchman. Others may state that the painting overdoes the sorrow of the Africans who encountered the slave trade and that since slavery is over, no one should hold it against white people, namely the Dutch. Still others make some interesting assertions about slavery and how it never even existed; however reliable these sources seem is up for interpretation. With people like Delegate Hargrove, it is hard to say that everyone believes African Americans still have a right to the effects still felt from slavery. These arguments, though valid to some extent, do not fully encapsulate the effect that slavery had on Africans as a formerly culturally isolated group. Okediji, as an African American artist, still encountered prejudice and other feelings that linger from slavery and he wanted to make a statement about his experience as an African and that the effects from slavery surpass time.

Okediji’s painting incorporates many formal qualities that speak volumes about the history of his ancestors. He, like many modern African Americans, still feel the plight of their history and can never fully overcome the strife inflicted upon them by the Dutch and the Americans. This painting represents his feelings about the persistence of slavery-related notions and the emotions that effect people of today.

slow down freight train

Slow Down Freight Train by Rose Piper instantly snatches your attention with the abstracted despair of the subject portrayed. The contrasting colors of red and green add to the intensity of emotion by creating visual conflict within the work and eliciting the emotions of the subject from the viewer as well as representing the torn social, political, and emotional consequences of the time period.

According to Ackland’s class-study webpage on Slow Down Freight Train Rose Piper was inspired by a song called “Freight Train Blues,” a lamenting blues tune from the 1920s. The webpage also gives much historical background to the painting about a phenomenon in American history that I was not aware of known as The Great Migration.

The curving lines of the figure contrast against the very linear background to add to the fluidity of motion that the figure seems to be experiencing and allows the motion to be expressed in stark contrast to the swift-moving train that he is riding. By making the only curved lines in the entire piece form the figure it shows him as an outsider and a person who belongs somewhere else instead of riding far away from his loved ones. The artist of the piece describes the man as “the abstraction of the human figure...aris[ing] out of a single moment of heightened expression. The attenuated form suggests the essence of longing." By making the figure red against a background comprised of entirely green shades and by making every line that the figure consists of curved in contrast with the straight lines of the scene that he is sitting in makes him stick out from the painting entirely. The emotion conveyed by his crying mouth suggests that he is yelling, perhaps calling in despair for the loved ones that he has left behind.

The Great Migration of the 1920s was when many African-American males from the Southern states began to move North to work in the Chicago meat market or the Detroit automobile industry. The main catch was that they couldn’t bring their loved ones and often left behind their mothers, wives, children, and girlfriends. “Freight Train Blues,” the song which inspired Rose Piper to paint Slow Down Freight Train has a chugging, lamenting back music which makes the song drag along full of the emotion of loss. Piper uses the colors and lines to draw the eye to the man’s sorrowful face which lacks any real features except his wide crying mouth. This lack of facial features represents how, by moving up north away from his family, he is growing further away from his roots and essentially losing his identity. Piper only leaves him enough of himself to express his anguish at leaving his homeland. The expression on his face, and his exaggerated posture suggest that his soul is longing for home, his body is pointing in the direction that the train is moving away from and the shout leaving his throat seems like it is trying to reach back to the family that he left people.

Rose Piper says that the name of the painting Slow Down Freight Train is a woman telling the train to slow down so that she can catch it and go along with her man. This is an obvious reference to the song “Freight Train Blues” which is the lament of a woman whose man has gone up north to work in these brutal industries. The name of the painting as well as the song that inspired it adds an extra dimension to the work as if the lamenting figure is hearing the call of his woman back home. The interesting thing about this added dimension of the painting is that the focus and subject matter of the work itself is entirely masculine yet the inspiration, title, and even the artist are all feminine. This separation of the sexes in reality yet mixture in theory is also representative of a human soul and the longing that the subject himself and the speaker of the title have for one another.

The monotony and strangeness of the world that the figure is traveling through is represented in the very linear and parallel lines of the background. The lines of the horizon, the boards of the train, and the power lines off in the distance are all so stark and in such contrast with the fluid soulful figure that it alienates him. He appears to be in a world that he entirely does not belong to as if the further from his home that he goes the more the world around him changes into a frightening and very bleak, linear place to live. The soulful, curvy figure of the man seems as if he is suffering to death simply because his surroundings are absolutely opposite of his being.

The lines coloring and focus of the painting along with the title and cultural context all combine to make Slow Down Freight Train a very sorrowful and emotion-filled painting. The features (or lack thereof) of the figure and the contrasting colors make him even more of an outsider in the world that he is traveling to and suggest that he has left his soul behind him with his family and loved ones.

The Mona Lisa is Happy

In Cracking the Mona Lisa Smile, Elizabeth Millard demonstrates how technology is currently playing a role in the analysis of artwork. Personally, I think technology should not be used when analyzing art work, especially when so little is know about the work. The role of technology in artwork should be an informative role, which it is for the most part.

Millard references an experiment conducted by Sebe and Huang, who developed emotion-recognition software and applied it to the Mona Lisa. Using the software, the two University of Amsterdam and University of Illinois researchers quantified the Mona Lisa’s facial emotion. The use of “algorithms that quantify facial expressions” and “face tracking software that determines several major emotions in expression” allowed the researchers to quantify the painting. The researchers obtained their experimental data by determining the displacements in the Mona Lisa when compared to a “neutral, Caucasian female face”. The experiment determined that the Mona Lisa is 82.67 percent happy, 9.17 percent disgust, 5.81 percent fearful and 2.19 percent angry.

The two researchers admitted that the experiment was conducted for their own amusement and claim that they will not be examining any further works of art. Their main purpose was to highlight the “value and potential of emotion-recognition software.” While there is no doubt validity in their experiment, it should not be used as a means of analysis. If anyone were to use the results of this experiment to make an analysis of the Mona Lisa, they would be completely erroneous. The software may very well be dead on in the Mona Lisa being 82.67 percent happy; however, the Mona Lisa is a painting, not a real person. That means that, even though the facial expression is one of happiness, Da Vinici may not have intended it that way. The identity of the Mona Lisa is not known for sure. Some believe that she was “Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine cloth merchant”, while there are those that believe that she was not even based on a real person, but rather a composite of models. Dr. Lillian Schwartz, from Bell Labs even concluded that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Da Vinci through a technological comparison of the Mona Lisa to a known self-portrait by Da Vinci. When she used a computer to compare the two images “the features of the face (aligned) perfectly.” (Mona Lisa). Many art historians do not agree with Schwartz’s experiment. They claim that Da Vinci, as a great artist, would have spent a great deal of his time practicing drawing the human face. The historians claim that Da Vinci likely used his own face to practice drawing; therefore, there are many similarities between the Mona Lisa’s face and Da Vinci’s own face (Mona Lisa). Given that we know so little about the identity of the Mona Lisa, the data from Sebe and Huang’s experiment should not be used to make inferences about the painting. Technology will never be able to confirm what Da Vinci was actually thinking and feeling when he painted the Mona Lisa.

Technology can, however, serve more useful roles in art. According to Millard, technology is playing a major role in the discussion of art. Today, technology can unite artists and their audiences via the internet. The article notes the growing use of blogs to discuss a particular work of art. The article also notes that technology is now used for art databases. These databases store prices for artwork and are a great idea because the freedom of information on the internet prevents art galleries from taking advantage of potential customers. Perhaps the most useful application of technology is the use of it to verify the authenticity of artwork.

Millard, Elizabeth. " Cracking the Mona Lisa Smile." NewsFactor Network. 03 February

2006. 08 Apr 2007. http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=41276&page=1

"Mona Lisa." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 10 Apr 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_lisa

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Enlightening Vermeer's Light

Being a film buff who particularly loves costume pieces, naturally I was drawn to looking at Vermeer paintings for at least one of these assignments. Reading through the article “The Strangeness of Vermeer” by Svetlana Alpers in Art in America (an article written in 1996) I was stricken with just how many of the technical aspects of Vermeer’s work that Tracy Chevalier wove into her novel Girl With a Pearl Earring. What is truly interesting about the article is that it was written in reflection after going to an exposition of over two-thirds of Vermeer’s paintings. The article is not so much an examination of his techniques or the interpretations of specific paintings, but more the appreciation of all of his works put together and how, as a whole, the body of work can be interpreted.

There main argument of the article involves both Vermeer’s portrayal of women (as well as the few men in his paintings) and the way that the paintings are much more a small window into the ideal world than a reflection of it. Alpers claims that the portrayal of Vermeer’s women is not so much to represent them as women but that they become this overarching representation of humanity itself. The work that the article is most concerned with as a singular piece is Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid. Personally, my favorite aspect of Vermeer’s paintings (and from what I can tell, most critical acclaim) is his realistic and innovative use of lighting. Alper’s particular fascination seems to be with the lighting of the Lady’s bodice, as on one shoulder it’s a deep grayish tone and on the shoulder closer to the light source it has become entirely bleached white. The page of an art criticism teacher explains to me numerous pieces of symbolism in the painting that I never even picked up on, such as the large painting in the background being a famous rendition of Moses “indicating that somebody must be rescued and cherished” and that on the window there is the sign of Temperance.

The thing that really catches my attention when I look at the painting is that the maid in the background seems to be presiding over the action, as well as being idle. The Lady may be in the foreground, yet she is occupied and her face is hidden. The painting projects that while the maid may not have all the liberty and wealth in the world, she elevates herself above petty things in the letter (there is even a letter crumpled up on the floor suggesting that the Lady was not satisfied with a previous draft). The maid also has the freedom to dream, suggested by the fact that she stares wistfully out of the window, and though she wears a poor person’s dress, her body remains untouched by any table, finery, or task. I also like the way that both women look in completely opposite directions, leading one to think that perhaps two worlds are portrayed here even in this tiny corner of the room.

Granted, I may have slightly romantic notions as to Vermeer’s works because of the novel Girl With a Pearl Earring, yet even in the novel as well as the movie the “strangeness” (as Alpers calls it) of Vermeer’s work comes through. They portray his detachedness of his work that Alpers put best: “in Vermeer's practice the painter crafting an image on the canvas is as humanly detached as if he himself were light making an image on a camera obscura screen.”

An Abstract Dance

During the 1930’s and 40’s and the outbreak of World War II, surrealists fled from Europe and eventually settled in New York. Soon, their interest in unmediated expression influenced a younger generation of painters to find a voice for American art, one of these painters being abstract expressionist, Karen Davie. The European pioneers of abstraction heavily influenced the new movement, which later became known as Abstract Expressionism. The movement “abstract” gets its name because it incorporates emotion and is a rebellion from the norm. Unlike the “hands off” approach that Jackson Pollock used with drip paint, Karen’s technique uses thick blocks of color and light to create the “busy” feeling. As opposed to the style of Jackson Pollock, Davie’s stoke of her brush tip never leaves the canvas. With abstract expressionism being somewhat of an emotion, many have their opinions as to whether Davie’s creations are considered art when trying to interpret her work. While Deven Golden praises Davie for the original aesthetics, tools and techniques that intensify her work, Roberta Smith claims that her work is a joke resembling that of a fun house as opposed to a piece of work.

Creating art as pure emotion and creativity, the idea of expressionism itself said, “what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". This all-over approach used every aspect of the canvas and treated the entire space the same so that the eye can make its own meaning. According to Deven Golden, the way that the lines veer from the canvas symbolizes a losing control as both the viewer and the artist. Using darker colors mixed in with a host of bright sunny ones, Golden credits Davie’s clever use of dark colors to liven up the brighter ones. The longer one looks at the paintings, the more interpretations and ideas a person draws. In no way however, she adds, that even though the lines appear sad and droopy, Davies works are not depressing because her brush strokes are too erratic and difficult to consider depressing. Because Davie’s paintings require all of her body, she has to concentrate heavily on her task, as she performs her “dance” she worked so hard to choreograph.

At the time, few scholarly art critics could interpret the ideas and meanings in works such as Jackson’s and Karen’s because they lacked literary knowledge. Some could not and did not understand the political references and the beauty behind the rebellious attitudes of the era. Roberta Smith of the New York Times presents her thoughts addressing Karen’s works. Unable to make connections to the strokes that was ineptly explained by Deven Golden, Roberta only seems to mock the works of Davie. One of Davie’s works entitled “Pushed, Pulled, Depleted, & Duplicate looks like several of her other paintings.

However, the color and strokes of the brush in each suggest a different emotion. Smith incoherently adds that her works are similar to the stripes in a fun-house mirror. She further goes on insulting Davie’s usage of tools as being “inextricably fused” making her work seem more and more a blob of nothing, concluding that her works resembles toothpaste from a tube. Sarcastically, Smith mocks the mixed colors that Davie blends saying that the colors make nothing but curves that look like candy-stripes. Understandably, there clearly must have been something else going through the artist’s mind. Its art for crying out loud, a chance to express feelings, emotions and freeness.

At the most, I am able to say that I understand how the colors and forms of the paintings created by Davie are abstract. I believe that Roberta needs to find a little more research on what exactly abstract expressionism is because she clearly is confused. Who are we to say that someone’s work is not abstract when we were obviously not in their minds while they were painting? It is not modernism in clown makeup Smith mocked, but rather a choreographed movement to relay her emotions. We don’t know if those white and red, and blue colors show her pride in her country, or if the landscape of the portrait shows Davie’s anger and discontent with the politics in the country. This may be her way of showing her dissatisfaction with the way things are rather than using picket signs like normal people. As complicated as art may be, Davie’s simplistic yet complex style, has so much to say, if only we knew where it began.


Work Cited:
http://the-artists.org/MovementView.cfm?id=8A01EE83%2DBBCF%2D11D4%2DA93500D0B7069B40

Golden, Deven. “Notes on…Karin Davie.” http://www.artcritical.com/golden/DGDavie.htm

Smith, Roberta. “Art in Review”. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E0DD103AF930A15757C0A96F958260

Van Gogh Loved to Sew

Sewing is an archaic way of making clothes. Even when Vincent van Gogh was around, in the 19th century, sewing machines were used as a practical way of manufacturing items to be worn. With this in mind, Lauren Soth, in her article “Van Gogh’s Images of Women Sowing” still asserts that van Gogh painted women manually sewing because he had values that “led him to choose such traditional subjects as seemed illustrative of them.” Who really knows what van Gogh’s values were? Using just some of van Gogh’s common motifs in his paintings and his love life as evidence of his distain for the mechanical world is founded in some ways, but not in others. Focusing, instead, on his own words about life will lead the viewer to a clearer perception of the artist, his ideals, and the reasons behind his choice of subject.



“To me it is as clear as day that one must feel what one draws.” Because van Gogh depicted his life with his artwork, Soth uses van Gogh's quote saying that his works consisted of manual labor and nothing technological. Yet the lack of technological labor becomes questionable especially when his work evolved around the Industrial Revolution. His negligence of technological innovations confused many educated individuals. Surely van Gogh encountered technical mechanisms; therefore, one cannot assume that he ignored the sewing machines near him. Van Gogh painted things relevant to life such as women sewing clothes evident in his piece entitle "Women Sewing". However, one cannot assert that he detested sewing machines and valued traditions, when instead he just liked the image of a seamstress. Van Gogh just drew as he felt, not truly as he believed. To believe and to feel two evoke two dissimilar emotions.


Van Gogh, like Soth points out, did try to paint in the likeness of his life, but it was not his true life and instead what he wished it to be. In the “Woman Sewing,” the subject most probably being his lover and also prostitute called Sien, Soth determines that this woman must have sewn his clothes by hand; however, given the time period, that idea cannot be. The clothing style of this period () was much more likely to have been sewn mechanically because of the invention of the sewing machine. The garbs were intricately woven and fashioned, something a simple seamstress would be incapable of doing by hand. Soth goes on to quote van Gogh as saying, in regards to Sien, “she is incapable of doing what she ought to do,” as a clear indication that van Gogh believed she should be at home sewing instead of whoring herself out, which could be the case. But, in the context, Soth asserts van Gogh proclaimed that women should sew and do nothing to earn their wages. He did end up leaving her, but not because of her wage earning power, but because she was indeed a prostitute. His painting reflected not his life, but some sort of ideal that did not directly correlate with his surroundings. In particular, “Woman Sewing,” van Gogh is determined to paint the seamstress “as a dark silhouette against the window” which could be indicative of a longing for escape from manual labor that a sewing machine and other industries might provide if the seamstress ventures into the light of the outdoors. If interpreted this way, the seamstress and van Gogh himself are rejecting traditional ways and instead yearn for change.


When van Gogh left Holland, he no longer painted with the seamstress motif. Soth believes it was because of his emotional ties to Sien and the seaming world, which is valid given the eventual departure of Sien and the fact that his family rejected the promiscuous life of Sien, pleading with him to abandon her. Yet it is also plausible to assume he found other things to paint. Van Gogh simply realized it was idealistic to believe that women would solely sew his clothes and do nothing else, therefore he stopped painting this image once he left Holland, where perhaps more women were willing to sew. The fact that he never returned to Holland meant he was no longer concerning himself with the manufacturing of clothing in a homely sense and instead focused on broader issues, such as farming and real every day life that was not just his ideal.

Religious Undertones In Rembrandt's Latter Paintings

In an article from ArtNet.com, critic N. F. Karlins discusses Rembrandt’s concluding works and how these works seem to address Rembrandt’s inner struggles through religious subject matter. During Rembrandt’s later years, he was faced with economic problems as he was, at that point, “yesterday’s news.” Not only was he troubled financially, but he was also brought before a court by a woman who claimed he had fallen back on a promise to marry her (tough legal system). To make matters worse, Rembrandt was forced to live out his days with a sullied reputation after having an illegitimate child with the lucky Hendrickje Stoffels.

The series of paintings, perhaps an intentional series, perhaps not, represents inner struggle. Each painting is characterized by “lined brows, putty-like hands and drooping eyelids,” a fact that illustrates the inner drama and emotional struggles faced by each figure. One notices the deep struggle over, presumably, religious questions in the majority of the paintings. Religion is the presumed topic of contemplation by the characters considering a number of characteristics found in many of the works. These characteristics include the subject matter itself (saints, evangelists, Christ, the Sorrowful Virgin, possibly a monk), signs of martyrdom (knives, swords) as well as numerous props such as religious dress and bibles. At least one character, the apostle Paul, is represented in more than one painting.

Rembrandt’s spiritual history during the time these paintings were created leads one to believe that the paintings relate to the struggles one faces as life comes to an end coupled with the ensuing questions and uncertainties. Rembrandt, religious or not, must have been looking for answers to the struggles facing his life and as was natural for him, he expressed his pains and questions through art. This last set of paintings was by no means his only attempt to represent Christianity. Religiously themed paintings can be found throughout Rembrandt’s career. The painting illustrating the mother of his illegitimate child, Hendrickje Stoffels, may have been painted to show the agony of not only the social stigmas placed on someone in the situation, but also the perceived scorn from God after having a child out of wedlock. The focus of the painting, as is the case with the others in the set, is on Stoffels' face. With a pursed mouth and face that looks away from the painter, the painting seems to indicate embarrassment and contemplation over how and why the subject became involved in such a socially and religiously unacceptable act.

One oddity concerning The Apostle Bartholomew is that Rembrandt paints him in traditional European clothing. Considering Bartholomew lived in the first century, he lacked the luxury of a nice comb-over haircut or chic European duds. He does carry a knife that represents his religious martyrdom, but Rembrandt gets the viewer thinking by portraying Bartholomew as his contemporary. This painting was probably supposed to parallel a more realistic representation of Bartholomew that Rembrandt painted about a half decade earlier and can be seen by clicking on the earlier link.

Rembrandt’s last paintings are something to marvel over. Not only are they aesthetically appealing, but they allow the viewer to dive into Rembrandt’s past through a significant amount of imagery. Upon learning of Rembrandt's life history during the time of his latter works, one is able to realize where he was coming from and what influenced his paintings. In terms of social and religious questions, Rembrandt probably had a lot of them during this time. Perhaps he wasn’t struggling with religious questions, but only decided to illustrate his emotional uncertainty through subject matter that was familiar to him.