Art: Sacred Gloom

IN the annals of Western painting, different masters have won acclaim on different grounds. Michelangelo is known mainly for his mastery of form, Raphael and Veronese for mastery of composition, Titian for color. Correggio and Tintoretto stand out, as the critic Kenyon Cox observed, for their use of light and shade not just as a tool for modeling in three dimensions, but as a sovereign element of design. To this latter group belongs Rembrandt (16061669), who plumbed the expressive depths of light and shade as no artist has before or since. And not only on that account does he enjoy a unique status among the old masters. In the underappreciated-genius department, he was in his time the genuine item.

An exhibition of “Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits” is on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington until May 1; it will be at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles from June 7 through August 28. The exhibition, organized by the National Gallery’s curator of Northern Baroque painting, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., includes 17 works that reflect a distillation of pictorial method in Rembrandt’s later work and tell us a good deal about his significance as an artist. The portraits include Christ, the Virgin, several apostles, an evangelist, and other religious figures. Enhanced by the display of etchings on Biblical subjects that Rembrandt produced during the 1650s and 1660s, this exhibition is commendable for its manageable size as well as its superlative content. It is always nice not to enter a museum with the feeling of embarking on an endurance contest.

CL

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Catesby Leigh

Catesby Leigh writes about public art and architecture and lives in Washington, D.C.

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IN the annals of Western painting, different masters have won acclaim on different grounds. Michelangelo is known mainly for his mastery of form, Raphael and Veronese for mastery of composition, Titian for color. Correggio and Tintoretto stand out, as the critic Kenyon Cox observed, for their use of light and shade not just as a tool for modeling in three dimensions, but as a sovereign element of design. To this latter group belongs Rembrandt (16061669), who plumbed the expressive depths of light and shade as no artist has before or since. And not only on that account does he enjoy a unique status among the old masters. In the underappreciated-genius department, he was in his time the genuine item.

An exhibition of “Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits” is on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington until May 1; it will be at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles from June 7 through August 28. The exhibition, organized by the National Gallery’s curator of Northern Baroque painting, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., includes 17 works that reflect a distillation of pictorial method in Rembrandt’s later work and tell us a good deal about his significance as an artist. The portraits include Christ, the Virgin, several apostles, an evangelist, and other religious figures. Enhanced by the display of etchings on Biblical subjects that Rembrandt produced during the 1650s and 1660s, this exhibition is commendable for its manageable size as well as its superlative content. It is always nice not to enter a museum with the feeling of embarking on an endurance contest.