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FA 149a The Age of Rubens and Rembrandt
Mandel Humanities Center
Block J: TF 12:30 pm – 1:50 pm
Professor Jonathan Unglaub
x6-2665 unglaub@brandeis.edu
Office Hours: T 2:00 – 4:00 pm; and by appointment
Overview:
This course focuses on the two major figures who defined Northern Baroque painting, Peter Paul Rubens (15771640) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), and their contemporaries, Anton Van Dyck (1599-1641) and Johannes
Vermeer (1632-75). Within the small area of modern Belgium and Holland, and a time frame of less than seventy-five
years, great historical and artistic revolutions took place. Indeed, the works of these artists reveal how the entire
conception of the purpose and parameters of painting had evolved. The course will chart this evolution as we examine the
life and works of each master.
Rubens and his pre-eminent pupil Van Dyck achieved their fame in the service of the Church and various courts
throughout Europe, but principally in Catholic, Spanish-controlled Flanders. Having each spent an extended period in
Italy, their pictorial style synthesized the grandeur of antiquity, the rigorous drawing of Michelangelo and Raphael, the
lush palette of Titian and Veronese, and the rhetorical expression of the emerging baroque manner. They emulated the
Renaissance masters not only in style, but also in stature, serving princes in Italy, Flanders, France, England, and Spain
with an intimacy and recognition rivaled only by Raphael and Titian. In many ways, their story is the final chapter of the
Italian Renaissance.
In the Protestant Northern Netherlands, liberated from the yoke of Spanish dominion in 1579, Rembrandt and
Vermeer worked in a relatively open market, which encouraged specialization, such as history painting, still-life,
landscape, portraiture, and genre scenes. Artists became entrepreneurs in the modern, bourgeois sense, and were no
longer bound exclusively by the constraints of Church and State patronage. At times, this permitted personal reflection
and expression, always a component of great art, to drive the creative process, resulting in the tragic portraits of
Rembrandt and the enigmatic interiors of Vermeer. Whereas Rubens and Van Dyck scaled the summit of courtly status
through their spectacular works for Church and aristocratic patrons, the intimate, probing paintings of Rembrandt and
Vermeer herald the self-reflective artist of modernity.
Four-Credit Course (with three hours of class-time per week)
Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study
time per week on average in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.).
Museum Visits and Assignments:
Boston is blessed with exceptional collections of Dutch and Flemish painting of the seventeenth century in the Museum of
Fine Arts, the Gardner Museum, and the Harvard Art Museums. Furthermore a major international loan exhibition, Class
Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, will bring many works from far afield to Boston
this fall. The course has been tailored to take full advantage of these resources, both through museum visits and written
assignments.
I have deliberately scheduled this course in the TF J block to facilitate four mandatory Museum visits on Fridays (October
9th and 16th, November 13th and 20th). These will take place during class time, but given transport will necessarily extend
beyond 2:00. It is incumbent upon you to arrange your schedules accordingly. We will use a combination of EL Branvan and driving into Cambridge and Boston, though students will need to return on the Brandeis shuttle.
1. October 9th: visit to Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge to view drawings by Rubens and Van Dyck in the study
center and paintings by Rubens in the galleries.
2. October 16th:visit to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston to view works by Rubens, his followers, and early
Rembrandt in the permanent collection. There is also an important group of portraits by Rubens, Van Dyck, and
the young Rembrandt at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, around the corner from the MFA. The intimate
nature of the collection makes it less inhospitable to large group discussions. Consequently, a 5-6 page midterm
paper will focus on these paintings, which you will study carefully on your own after the MFA visit – where we
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will wrap up by 2:30. Alas, the only Vermeer in Boston was stolen, along with Rembrandt’s unique seascape,
from the Gardner in 1990.
3. November 13th: we will meet with MFA Curator Ronni Baer, who will lead a tour of Class Distinctions: Dutch
Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer. The research paper topics will focus on groups of works in the
exhibition, which you should examine individually after the group visit.
4. November 20th: we will visit the Print study room of the MFA to view Rembrandt drawings and etchings. After
the group visit, you can return to the exhibition for further study on your chosen group of works for the paper.
Readings:
For each meeting, readings have been selected to stimulate discussion. It is essential that you do the readings before the
class for which they are listed and come to class prepared to grapple with them.
The readings include three course texts, which are available at the bookstore.
Belkin, Kristen Lohse, Rubens (London: Phaidon, 1997).
Westermann, Mariët, Rembrandt (London: Phaidon, 2000).
Franits, Wayne, Vermeer (London: Phaidon, 2015).
<<For further on Vermeer, consult the exhaustive website maintained by artist Jonathan Janson: essentialvermeer.com>>
The remainder of the readings, various articles and book chapters, are available on LATTE. Please note that some of the
readings have been divided to facilitate downloading. Full references are given in the class schedule.
Study Guides and LATTE:
Study guides will be distributed concurrent with the presentation of material in class. The study guides will also be posted
on the LATTE site, along with assignments and the syllabus. LATTE will also include images that correspond to those
listed on the study guides.
Assignments and Grade Calculation:
This course is writing intensive (W-I). There will be three significant writing assignments based on course readings,
independent research, and, most importantly, direct analysis of original works of art. The major work of the semester, the
research paper, will be submitted in several stages and revised: proposal/ outline; full rough draft; final version. Students
will also present their research, either individually or as groups (tbd), in presentations scheduled during the exam period.
The other written assignments include a midterm essay on the portraiture of Rembrandt, Rubens, and Van Dyck and a
short reading report (5-6 pages) on a group of articles examining Rubens’ famed Marie de’Medici cycle.
In addition, each student will be assigned a reading to present, either in class or during the field trips, at some point during
the semester (marked with * in syllabus). These 5-8 minute presentations must include visuals and formulate questions to
initiate discussion. A two-page summary of the reading will be submitted following the presentation. The allocation of
readings will be made a couple of weeks into the term.
Grade distribution:
20% Readings Report on Rubens’s Marie de’Medici cycle, due Tuesday, September 22nd, in class.
20% Gardner Museum midterm essay, due by Friday, October 23rd.
5% Research paper prospectus, bibliography, outline and due by Wednesday, November 18th.
15% Research Paper, advanced draft due electronically by Friday, December 4th.
20% Research Paper, Final version due week of December 14th (no later than December 18th).
10% Presentation of reading and write-up
10% Presentation of research paper
NOTE: Extension requests require advance notice and exceptional circumstances to be considered.
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Attendance: After 2 unexcused absences, 2 percentage points will be deducted from final grade for each subsequent
unexcused absence. Museum visits are mandatory.
If you are a student who needs academic accommodations because of a documented disability, you should contact
me and present your letter of accommodation as soon as possible. If you have questions about documenting a
disability or requesting academic accommodations, you should contact Assistant Dean Beth Rodgers Kay in
Undergraduate Affairs at 6-3470. Letters of accommodations should be presented at the start of the semester to
ensure provision of accommodations. Accommodations cannot be granted retroactively.
Learning Goals
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To understand the artistic development, cultural importance and historical context of Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer
To read critically and analyze the scholarship on these artists and the time period
Master the visual analysis of original works of art in this period, through Museum visit discussion and written assignments
To formulate and execute a compelling research paper on a thematically related group of original artworks.
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Schedule of Classes:
F: 8/28 Professor Unglaub out of town. Watch video course overview via Collaj. Class time will be made up in
Museum trips, which due to transport will extend beyond course hours on several Fridays.
Week I
T: 9/01 Religious and Political Strife in the Spanish Netherlands and Rubens’s Beginnings
Belkin, 11-38.
Schama, Simon, “Jan and Maria,” in Rembrandt’s Eyes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998),
41-88.
F: 9/04 Absorbing the Renaissance: Rubens in Italy
Belkin, 41-92.
Lamster, Mark, Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of Peter Paul Rubens (New
York: Doubleday, 2009), 5-38.
Week II
T: 9/08 Drama of the Cross: The Antwerp Altarpieces
Belkin, 95-120, 126-29.
Eugene Fromentin and Max Rooses on the Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross
in J.R. Martin, ed., Rubens: The Antwerp Altarpieces (New York, 1969), 81-90; 92-112.
F: 9/11 Home and Studio: The “Production” of Rubens
Belkin, 121-170.
Dempsey, Charles. “Euanthes Redivivus: Rubens’s Prometheus Bound.” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967): 420-425.
* Schrader, Stephanie, “Implicit Understanding: Rubens and the Representation of the Jesuit Missions in
Asia,” in Looking East: Rubens's Encounter with Asia (Exh. cat., Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
2013).
Week III
T: 9/15 No class, Rosh Hashanah
F: 9/18 Rubens as Mythographer
*Alpers, Svetlana, “Creativity in the Flesh: The Drunken Silenus,” in The Making of Rubens (New
Haven, 1995), 101-157.
* Carroll, Margaret, “The Erotics of Absolutism: Rubens and the Mystification of Sexual
Violence,” Representations 25 (1989): 3-30.
Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, “The Life of Peter Paul Rubens,” in The Lives of the Modern
Painters, Sculptors and Architects, transl. A. Wohl (Cambridge, 2005), 193-198.
Week IV
T: 9/22 Engendering “Her-story”: Mythology, Dominion and The Marie de’ Medici Cycle
Belkin, 173-196.
Carroll, Margaret, “Womanliness as Masquerade: The Case of Marie de Médicis,” in Painting
and Politics in Northern Europe: Van Eyck, Bruegel, Rubens, and their Contemporaries (University Park,
2008), pp. 102-61.
Johnson, Geraldine, “Pictures Fit for a Queen: Peter Paul Rubens and the Marie de’Medici
Cycle,” Art History 16 (1993): 447-69.
Cohen, Sarah R., “Rubens’s France; Gender and Personification in the Marie de Médicis Cycle,”
Art Bulletin 85 (2003): 490-522.
Tuesday, September 22, Reading Report (Carroll, Cohen, and Johnson) due in class
F: 9/25 Peace and Propaganda: Encounters in Spain and England
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Belkin, 199-228, 256-266, 279-291.
Lamster, Mark, Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of Peter Paul Rubens
(New York: Doubleday, 2009),169-225.
* Rosenthal, Lisa, “The ‘Parens Patriae’: Familial Imagery in Rubens's Minerva Protects Pax
from Mars,” Art History 12 (1989): 22-38.
Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, “The Life of Peter Paul Rubens,” (Cambridge, 2005), 198-206.
Week V
T: 9/29 No class, Brandeis Monday
F:10/2 Domestic Tranquility: Love, Landscape and Myth in the Last Years
Belkin, 231-56, 269-279, 291-320.
* Thøfner, Margit, “Helena Fourment's Het Pelsken,” Art History 27 (2004): 1-33.
Week VI
T:10/6 Emulation: Anton van Dyck, the Example of Rubens, and Aristocratic Portraiture
Vlieghe, Hans, “Early and Late Van Dyck,” and “The Portrait,” in Flemish Art
and Architecture 1585-1700 (New Haven, 1998), 36-39, 63-68, 119-137.
* Goodman, Elise, “Woman's Supremacy over Nature: Van Dyck's Portrait of Elena
Grimaldi,” Artibus et historiae 15 (1994): 129-143.
F:10/9 Visit to Harvard Art Museums to study works by Rubens and Van Dyck
Week VII
M: 10/13 The Courtier Artist: Van Dyck in Stuart England
* Held, Julius, “Le Roi à la Chasse,” in Rubens and his Circle, eds. Ann Lowenthal, David
Rosand, John Walsh (Princeton, 1982), 65-79.
* Johns, Christopher, “Politics, Nationalism, and Friendship in Van Dyck’s ‘Le Roi à la Ciasse,” Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 51 (1988): 243-61.
F: 10/16 MFA visit: Rubens, Van Dyck, and Early Rembrandt
Held, Julius, “Rubens’ King of Tunis and Vermeyen’s Portrait of Mulay Ahmad,” in Rubens and
his Circle (Princeton, 1982), 3-8.
* Berger, Robert W., “Rubens’s Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin
77 (1979), 4-35.
* Sutton, Peter C., “Rubens’s Sacrifice of the Old Covenant from the Coolidge Collection,”
Journal of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston 1 (1989): 4-21.
* Schama, Simon, “The Quiddity,” in Rembrandt's Eyes (New York, 1999), 9-38.
<< There will be time to visit the neighboring Gardner Museum to work on the take-home Midterm>>
Week VIII
T: 10/20 Young Rembrandt in Leiden
Westermann, 4-60.
Huygens, Constantijn, from his “Autobiography,” trans. B. Binstock (New York, 1997), 245-48.
Schama, Simon, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture of the Golden Age (New
York, 1987), Chapter 5, 289-371.
F: 10/23 Histories of the 1630s: Rembrandt’s Faith and the Jewish Bible
Westermann, 101-142.
* Nevitt, H. Rodney, “Bridal Decorum and Dangerous Looks: Rembrandt’s Wedding Feast of Samson,”
in Chong, Alan and Zell, Michael, eds., Rethinking Rembrandt (Zwolle, 2002), 49-71.
Perlove, Shelly and Larry A. Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age
(University Park, 2009), “Father of Multitudes: Abraham’s Covenant,” 76-92.
<<Friday, October 23rd, Gardner take home midterm due by Midnight>>
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Week IX
T: 10/27 From Portrait to Performance: The Anatomy Lesson and Theatrical Portraiture
Westermann, 63-98; 145-60.
Riegl, Aloïs, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” trans. B. Binstock, October 74
(1995): 3-15.
* Recommended: Schupbach, William, “The Paradox of Rembrandt’s ‘Anatomy’ of Dr. Tulp,”
Medical History (1982): 1-49.
F: 10/30: Professor Unglaub out of town at conference; Film, Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rembrandt.
<<Paper topics distributed, begin consulting exhibition catalogue and reserve readings>>
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Week X
T: 11/03 Public Spectacles: Nightwatch and the Syndics of the Draper’s Guild
Westermann, 161-74, 298-302.
Riegl, Aloïs, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” trans. Benjamin Binstock, October 74 (1995): 15-35.
* Margaret Carroll, “Accidents will Happen: The Case of the Nightwatch” in Rethinking Rembrandt, ed. by Alan
Chong and Michael Zell (Boston: Gardner Museum, 2002), 91-105.
* Binstock, Benjamin, “Seeing Representations; or, The Hidden Master in Rembrandt’s Syndics,”
Representations 84 (2003): 1-37.
F: 11/06 Rembrandt, Women, and the Nude
Westermann, 209-32, 245-53.
Schama, Simon, Rembrandt’s Eyes (New York, 1999), 383-401, 542-561.
* Sluijter, Eric Jan, “Rembrandt’s Bathsheba and the Conventions of a Seductive Theme,” in Rembrandt’s
Bathsheba Reading King David’s Letter, ed. Ann Jensen Adams (Cambridge, 1998), 48-99.
Week XI
T:11/10 Touch and Contemplation, Surface and Enigma: Rembrandt’s Late Histories
Westermann, 235-45, 287-98, 302-10.
* Alpers, Svetlana, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market, (London, 1988),
“Chapter 1: The Master’s Touch,” 14-33.
* Held, Julius, “Rembrandt’s Aristotle,” in Rembrandt Studies (Princeton, 1991), 17-58.
F: 11/13 Visit to MFA Exhibition: Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer with
Curator Ronni Baer
Week XII
T: 11/17 Confessions in Pigment: Later Portraits and Self-Portraits
Westermann, 196-206, 310-330.
* Chapman, H. Perry, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity
(Princeton, 1990), “Chapter IV: Artist in the Studio,” 79-104.
<< Wednesday, November 18th: Prospectus/ bibliography/ outline due electronically>>
<< Thursday, November 19th: Individual meetings with Professor U>>
F:11/20 The Pen and the Burin: Rembrandt’s Graphic Arts (visit to MFA Print and Drawings Study Center)
Westermann, 257-84.
Rassieur, Thomas, "Looking over Rembrandt's Shoulder: The Printmaker at Work," in Ackley, Clifford, ed.,
Rembrandt’s Journey: Painter*Draftsman*Etcher, exh, cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2003, 45-60.
* Carroll, Margaret, “Rembrandt as a Meditational Printmaker,” Art Bulletin 63 (1981), 585-610.
Week XIII
T: 11/24 Early Vermeer, Fabritius, and Delft Secular Painting
Franits, 1-64.
Montias, John, Vermeer and his Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton, 1989), Chapter 8:
“A Young Artist in Delft,” 129-53.
F: 11/27 Thanksgiving Holiday, no class
Week XIV
T:12/01 Vermeer’s Interior Worlds
Franits, 74-167.
* Leonhard, Karin, “Vermeer's Pregnant Women: On Human Generation and Pictorial Representation,”
Art History 25 (2002): 293-318.
Recommended: Chapman, H. Perry, “Inside Vermeer’s Women,” In Marjorie E. Wieseman, ed., Vermeer’s
Women: Secrets and Silence (New Haven, CT, and London, 2011), 64–123.
F:12/04 Vermeer and the “Science” of Optical Painting
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Franits, 64-77, 168-98, 244-50.
* Steadman, Philip, “Allegory, Realism, and Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura,” Early Science and
Medicine 10 (2005): 287-313.
<< Friday December 4th: Research Paper draft due electronically by midnight >>
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Week XV
T:12/08 Vermeer and Allegory: The Art of Painting
Franits, 202-44, 254-82.
* Arasse, Daniel, Vermeer: Faith in Painting, “Chapter 4: The Art of Painting,” Terry Grabar,
trans. (Princeton, 1994), 40-58.
* Sluitjer, Eric van, “Vermeer, Fame, and Female Beauty: The Art of Painting,” in Vermeer Studies,
eds. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (Washington, D.C., 1998), 265-83.
* Binstock, Benjamin, Vermeer’s Family Secrets (New York: Routlege, 2008), Chapter 5: “Painting and
Procreation,” 171-89.
Presentation of Research: 10-minute presentations of research projects to be scheduled during a mutually agreed upon
time during the study day and the scheduled final exam period: Thursday December 17th, 1:30-4:30 pm
Revised Research Paper, due week of Dec. 14th; NO later than December 18th at 5:00pm