Leiden 1606 - 1669 Amsterdam

Jan Cornelis Sylvius, Preacher (1st State), 1633

Etching, drypoint and engraving

166 x 142 mm.; 6 5/8 x 5 5/8 inches

Provenance:

Unknown collector (Lugt 824)

Wetterauer Collection, ink stamp on verso (not in Lugt)

Reference:

Bartsch 266

Biörklund/Barnard 33-H

Hollstein (White/Boon) 266

Notes:

1. A superb, brilliant and early 1st State impression with inky plate edges and touches of burr around the eyes and under the left ear. In the following 2nd State, particularly seen in the re-worked contours around the head of Sylvius, much of the harmony and luminosity of the 1st State is lost.

2. This impression is an example of Biörklund’s 1st State (of two), Usticke’s 1st State (of three) and White/Boon’s1st State (of two).

3. This appears to be the first Rembrandt etched portrait of someone who was not an immediate member of his family. However, Jan Cornelis Sylvius (1564 - 1638), a preacher in the Reform Church of Holland, was indirectly related to Rembrandt in that he married Aeltje Uylenburgh, the sister of the father of Saskia Uylenburgh. Rembrandt married Saskia in 1634, the year after this portrait. Sylvius, established in Amsterdam from 1610 on, had been the tutor of Saskia who as an orphan had arrived in his house in about 1632. It thus was Sylvius who gave his consent to the marriage of Rembrandt and Saskia.

4. The years 1632 and 1633 represented Rembrandt’s most intensive activity as a portraitist. Of the fifty or so dated works from those years, forty-six are portraits. The subject of this rather severe but powerful portrait, Jan Cornelis Sylvius, is shown before an open book, presumably a bible. Treated in a baroque manner, with strong contrasts of blacks and whites, Sylvius looks out at us without directly engaging our eyes. As portrayed by Rembrandt, he comes on as a man who accords little importance to the surrounding exterior world.