Seeing Representations; or, The Hidden Master in Rembrandt's Syndics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4370109 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin Binstock (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 83 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-37 |
| Publication date | 2003-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Representations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0734-6018 • E-ISSN: 1533-855X |
| Publisher | University of California Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1525/rep.2003.83.1.1 |
| OpenAlex | W2099036377 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 8 |
Rembrandt's Syndics of the Drapers' Guild of 1662 is widely recognized as the crowning achievement of his career. Yet scholars cannot agree on what the five "sample-masters" positioned around a table are doing, or who they are looking at, if anyone. I propose that Rembrandt portrayed the sample-masters looking up from his studies of them in their account book and out at him. His brilliant solution for a specific artistic problem was based on the concrete circumstances of his process of composition and selfconsciously reflects on portraiture as a process in space and time. Rembrandt reveals himself as "hidden master" or invisible viewer, engaging his sitters in a dialectical relation, which we vicariously experience in turn
Aesthetics · Art · Dialectic · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Visual arts · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Architecture and Art History Studies · Art History and Market Analysis · Computer Science · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2021 (15) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |