The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis
The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis | |
---|---|
Swedish: Batavernas trohetsed till Claudius Civilis | |
Artist | Rembrandt |
Year | c. 1661–62 |
Type | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 196 cm × 309 cm (77 in × 122 in) |
Location | Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
Owner | Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts |
Website | Nationalmuseum Collection online |
The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (
The painting is on exhibition at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden.
Depiction
The painting follows
Civilis, Tacitus writes, "was unusually intelligent for a native, and passed himself off as a second
Commission
The painting was commissioned for the gallery of the new city hall on the
Treatment and reception
The sword-oath was invented by Rembrandt. There is one sword more in the painting – the one touching the front of the leader's blade – than Batavians holding them; works had entered the popular imagination as depictions of the revolt, and Flinck's design drew on the engraving of this scene. Van Veen followed baroque ideas of decorum by always showing Civilis in profile, with only his good eye visible.
A sketch survives (on the back of a funeral ticket dated October 1661) that shows that he had transferred the scene from Tacitus's "sacred grove" to a large vaulted hall with open arches.[12] After delivery, which was by July 1662, the painting hung in place for a short period before being returned to him for reasons that are undocumented, but may have involved perceptions of a lack of the decorum felt necessary for history painting, lack of finish and an insufficiently heroic approach to the story. When all four paintings were in place, the discrepancy was evident.[13] The council probably expected something similar in style, rather than the ominous grandeur of Rembrandt's conception.[14] The chiaroscuro is typical of Rembrandt's late works, but the "eerie light and shadow and the iridescent greyish blues and pale yellows" are not.[15]
In August 1662, when the painting was still there, Rembrandt signed an agreement giving a "quarter-share of his profits accruing from the piece for the City Hall and his prospective earnings from it."[16] By 24 September 1662, however, when the archbishop and elector of Cologne Maximilian Henry of Bavaria was received in the town hall, Rembrandt's painting was gone.[17] One objection may well have been the incongruous crown that Rembrandt had set upon Claudius Civilis's head and his dominating the scene, hardly features of a consultative, republican attitude.[18] Blankert suggested that the painting had too much dark, unused space, compared with the others who had filled the image space with figures in a more conventional manner.[19]
For Kenneth Clark:
"one need only look at the surviving fragment to see why official opinion could not accept it.... It is a most marvellous picture, but in places it borders on the absurd. The word Shakespearean is, for once, justifiable. Rembrandt has evoked the kind of quasi-mythical, heroic-magical past that is the setting for King Lear and Cymbeline, and, as with Shakespeare, this remoteness has allowed him to insert into an episode of primitive grandeur the life-giving roughage of the grotesque [the figures at the extreme sides]".[20]
Crenshaw writes that Rembrandt was away for a couple of months, and "... he did not have enough supporters in the right places when obstacles arose."
Later history
On 10 August 1734, the painting was bought at auction in Amsterdam by the merchant Nicolaas Kohl from
Peill, who had previously supported the King financially in his coup d'état in 1772, complied, and a plan of the royal collection shows the painting in a central position in one of the galleries. Around 1782, the painting was restored by conservator Erik Hallblad. Hallblad (1720-1814), who had developed or learnt a method for transferring an oil painting from one canvas to another, removed the paint layer from Rembrandt's original canvas and attached it to a new one. Some damage appears to have occurred during this risky process; the extra sword now seen on the painting was probably added by Hallblad to mask this. The painting is still owned by the Academy of Arts but has been deposited since 1864 in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.[26]
In the beginning of the twentieth century, a Danish author, Karl Madsen, noticed the sketch from Munich and assumed that Rembrandt—after his bankruptcy—fled to Sweden. He suggested that Rembrandt had painted the one-eyed Northern god, king and priest Odin.[27] In fact, Rembrandt's burial in Westerkerk was discovered in 1866, and the true history of the painting had been published in 1891.[28]
In March 2008, the Academy valued the painting at 750 million kronor (£61m, or $123m), but then put it on sale at 300 million kronor (£24m, or $49m—that is, at a 60% discount), on the condition that it be deposited straight back to the museum, and shown there as before, after purchase. This unusual measure was taken in order to raise money for exhibitions and other activities.[29]
The painting later traveled to Amsterdam for an exhibition on Late Rembrandt, and was on display at the Rijksmuseum next to The Night Watch.
From May 2017 till September 2018, the painting was the centerpiece of a special Rembrandt exhibit at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in Gothenburg, Sweden.[30]
See also
Notes
- ^ Schwartz, G. (1987) Rembrandt. Zijn leven, zijn schilderijen, pp. 319, 320, 331.
- ISBN 0-300-07451-4
- ^ Tacitus, Histories 4.14–15
- ^ Schwartz, G. (2006) Rembrandts Universe, His Art His Life His World, p. 179-183.
- ^ See UCLA website in external links below
- ^ Balbian Verster, J.F.L. (1925) DE CLAUDIUS CIVILIS VAN REMBRANDT. In: Amstelodamum, Jrb 22, pp. 7.
- ^ Clark, Kenneth, An Introduction to Rembrandt, 1978, London, John Murray/Readers Union, 1978, pp. 60. The contract, after sketches had been approved, was dated November 28th, 1659. Slive:90.
- ^ Slive, pp. 90–91
- ^ Schwartz, G. (2006). Rembrandt's Universe, His Art His Life His World, p. 179-183.
- ^ Tümpel, C. (1992) Rembrandt, p. 163.
- ^ One of the set, now in the Rijksmuseum
- ^ 196 x 180 mm. Staatliche Graphihische Sammlung, Munich
Online image of sketch Other drawings claimed in the past as figure sketches for this work are unlikely to be so – see Slive:332, n.35. - ^ Schwartz, G. (2006) Rembrandts Universe, His Art His Life His World, p. 182.
- ISBN 0-500-20167-6and Slive, p. 90
- ^ Slive, p. 90
- ^ Schwartz, G. (2006) Rembrandts Universe, His Art His Life His World, p. 179-183; Crenshaw, P. (2006) Rembrandt's Bankruptcy. The artist, his patrons and the art market in seventeenth-century Netherlands, p. 85.
- ^ Schmidt, H. (1920) Jürgen Ovens. Sein Leben und seine Werke, p. 85-88.
- ^ Israel, J. (1995) The Dutch Republic, Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806. Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 879.
- ^ Blankert, A. (1976) Ferdinand Bol, p. 63.
- ^ Clark, K. (1978) An Introduction to Rembrandt, p. 60. London. John Murray/Readers Union.
- ^ Crenshaw, P. (2006) Rembrandt's Bankruptcy. The artist, his patrons and the art market in seventeenth-century Netherlands, pp. 119, 146–7.
- ^ Schwartz, G. (2006) Rembrandts Universe, His Art His Life His World, p. 179-183; Balbian Verster, J.F.L. (1925) DE CLAUDIUS CIVILIS VAN REMBRANDT. In: Amstelodamum, Jrb 22, pp. 10.
- ^ Tümpel, C. (1992) Rembrandt, p. 163.
- ^ Crenshaw, P. (2006) Rembrandt's Bankruptcy. The artist, his patrons and the art market in seventeenth-century Netherlands, p. 85.
- ^ Nordenfalk (1982) p. 11; Cavalli-Björkman/Fryns/Sidén (2005) p. 408
- ^ Nordenfalk (1982), p. 10-12; Bille, C. (1956) Rembrandt's Claudius Civilis and its owners in the 18th century”. In: Oud-Holland, pp. 54–59.
- ^ Balbian Verster, J.F.L. (1925) DE CLAUDIUS CIVILIS VAN REMBRANDT. In: Amstelodamum, Jrb 22, pp. 3.
- ^ Roever, N. de (1891) "Een Rembrandt op ‘t Stadhuis". In: Oud-Holland IX (1891), p. 297-306 & Oud-Holland X (1892), p. 137-146.
- ^ Ritter, Karl (12 March 2008). "Rembrandt for sale at discount price (but you must give it back to museum)". The Independent. Retrieved 2008-03-12.
- ^ "Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis". Retrieved 2018-08-01.
References
- D'Adda, R. Rembrandt, 2006, Milano, Skira.
- Clark, Kenneth. An Introduction to Rembrandt, 1978, London, John Murray/Readers Union, pp. 60–61.
- Fuchs, R.H. Dutch painting, 1978, London, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-20167-6, pp. 74–76.
- Nordenfalk, Carl. Batavernas trohetsed: Rembrandts enda monumentalmålning, 1982, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum.
- Slive, Seymour. Dutch Painting, 1600–1800, 1995, Yale UP, ISBN 0-300-07451-4, pp. 90–91.
- Schama, S. The Power of Art.