Museum Het Rembrandthuis

Museum Het Rembrandthuis

By: Claudy: 18-11-2019

Diptych for the Rembrandt House Museum is on view in Rembrandt's former 'de Sael' through 16 February 2020.
In celebration of 'Rembrandt and the Golden Age 2019', marking 350 years since the artist's death, Jongstra draws inspiration from the natural sources of Rembrandt's artistic materials.
A richly varied palette of reds is the result of intensive scientific research into the historical madder root pigment, one of Rembrandt's most recognizable pigments, on a range of plant fibers, including nettle, hemp and flax. Flax is also the botanical source of linen from which Rembrandt's canvases were woven as well as of linseed oil used to mix his famous oil paints.
In conversation with the celebrated 'Marriage Portrait of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit' (c. 1632), Jongstra's diptych revives coveted tones of Burgundian Black as worn by the painting's prominent subjects. Each black shade was derived through collaborative historical reconstruction research using dye recipes from the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands (c. 1430s - 1580s)