Rembrandt's Portrait of a Musician

Author(s): Barry S. Brook and Carol Oja

Source: College Music Symposium, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 132-135
Published by: College Music Society
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Rembrandt, Portrait of a Musician

(Courtesy, The W.A. Clark Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art)

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Rembrandt's Portrait of a Musician

Barry S. Brook and Carol Oja
City University of New York

The Corcoran Gallery's "Portrait of a Musician" by Rembrandt- signed and

dated 1633- presents the iconographer with a maze of problems and a multitude of contradictory hypotheses. Although the Corcoran labels it a portrait of
Heinrich Schtz by Rembrandt, there has been considerable controversy surrounding both the identity of the musician and the authenticity of the painting
as a work of Rembrandt.

At least one well-known Rembrandt scholar, H. Gerson, in his revised

edition of A. Bredius's Rembrandt, doubts that the painting is by Rembrandt at

all. "The attribution to Rembrandt," he states, "is not correct. The handling
seems closer to Jacob Backer [Rembrandt's pupil in 1632]. Some details- the
hands [sic] for instance- are rather poor."1 Another distinguished Rembrandt
specialist, Julius Held, is convinced that "the hand with the music scroll was

not painted by Rembrandt, but was added later."2 The authenticity of the
painting as a whole has been generally accepted, however, especially when it
is realized that Rembrandt often made later alterations in his pictures. The
question of the model's hand and the scroll of music was confronted in the
report made by the Corcoran Gallery after the painting was cleaned in 1955;
it concluded that the hand was painted over the model's black cloak, but that
the paint of the hand and scroll was "chemically identical with the paint of the
face and so they must be virtually the same age; if not added by Rembrandt
himself, therefore, they must be closely contemporary."3
In the dispute over the identity of the portrait subject, three claimants
have been presented: Nicholas Lanier, Heinrich Schtz, and Constantijn Huygens. The identification of the sitter as Nicholas Lanier, the London musician,
was made in 1936 by A. de Hevesy, who based his argument primarily on the
comparison of the Rembrandt painting with a self-portrait of Lanier, now lo1 A. Bredius, The Complete Edition of the Paintings of Rembrandt, 3rd rev. and transi, ed. by Horst

Gerson (New York: Phaidon, 1969), 362.

2Julius Held, "Letters: Rembrandt and Nicholas Lamer, The Burlington Magazine 69
(1936), 286.
3The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Cat. 1955, pp. 35, 50.

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1 34 COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM

cated at Oxford.4 The resemblance between the men depicted in the two paintings was slight, however, and the hypothesis received little acceptance.

Another, more widely accepted theory was advanced in 1937 by Bruno

Maerker, who suggested that the subject of Rembrandt's portrait was the illustrious Heinrich Schtz.5 As proof Maerker compared the painting to one of
the three known portraits of Schtz- that by Christoph Spetner in the Leipzig
University Collection6- and postulated that the subjects of the two works bore
striking similarity to one another. Maerker further attempted to substantiate
his claim by suggesting that Heinrich Schtz visited Amsterdam during 1633,
thereby placing him in proximity to Rembrandt. Further support was granted
to this hypothesis in 1963 when Otto Benesch tried to link Schtz and Rembrandt through their dealings with Burckhardt Grossmann, the son of an ac-

quaintance of Schtz.7 The Maerker-Benesch theory was readily accepted by

many musicologists, most notably Hans Joachim Moser- Schtz's biographer,
who confessed to his early skepticism, but later came to agree that the portrait
could very likely depict Schtz8- and Wolfgang Rehm of the Heinrich Schtz
Gesellschaft.

The identification of Rembrandt's musician as Heinrich Schtz is indeed

intriguing, especially in light of the historical possibilities suggested by a meeting between two men of their stature. In his study of Rembrandt's "Christ Pre-

sented to the People," Emanuel Winternitz speculated that "it is, of course,
tempting to ponder what the two great original interpreters of the Bible- one
for the eye, the other for the ear- would have communicated to each other."9
The credibility of such a theory rests, however, on the question of whether or
not Schtz visited Amsterdam during 1633. Although it is known that he was
granted a leave of absence from his post in Dresden during this year and that
he visited both Hamburg and Copenhagen, there is no evidence whatever that

he took a side trip to Amsterdam. Any meeting between the two remains
conjecture.
Whereas for Constantijn Huygens, the final candidate for the subject of
Rembrandt's painting, there is much supporting evidence. Not only did he
54.

4A. de Hevesy, "Rembrandt and Nicholas Lanier," The Burlington Magazine 69 (1936), 153-

5Bruno Maerker, "Rembrandts Bildnis eines Musikers- Ein Schtz-Portrait?" Deutsche

Musikkultur 2 (1937-38), 329-45.
6The two other known portraits of Schtz include an engraving by Christian Romstet and

a painting by an unknown German master of around 1670 housed in the Deutsche Staats-

bibliothek in Berlin.

7Otto Benesch, "Schtz and Rembrandt," Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch, ed. Walter Gersten-

berg (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1963), 12-19.

8Hans Joachim Moser, Heinrich Schtz: Sein Leben und Werk, 2nd rev. ed. (Kassel: Brenreiter,

1954), 625.
9Emanuel Winternitz, "Rembrandt's 'Christ Presented to the People'- 1655: A Meditation
on Justice and Collective Guilt," Oud-HollandQ4 (1969), 185.

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REMBRANDT'S PORTRAIT OF A MUSICIAN 1 35

have ample opportunity to sit for a portrait by Rembrandt, but comparisons

of the Corcoran portrait with authenticated representations of Huygens are

most convincing.10 The identification of the musician as Huygens was made as
early as 1942 by the art historian Edith Greindl,11 and has recently been given
further credence in a superb study by Else Kai Sass, who discusses in careful
detail all the literature and much of the evidence surrounding the Rembrandt
portrait.12 Much of the information provided here is drawn from her article.

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687)- the famous Dutch diplomat, man of

letters, amateur musician, and poet- was clearly in a position to have been
painted by Rembrandt. He was in close contact with the master over a number
of years, including 1633, and was Rembrandt's intermediary for many of the
works that he executed for Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. Through Huygens' diaries and correspondence it is evident that he spent a substantial portion of 1633 in The Hague, where Rembrandt may also have been while painting The Elevation of the Cross. Furthermore, Edith Greindl has pointed out that

it was not so unusual for Huygens, a diplomat, to have been painted with a
music scroll. He was very proud of his musical accomplishments, which included the composition of more than 800 melodies, the publication of his own
collection of hymns, and the ability to play a number of different instruments.13

These talents had already been highlighted in a portrait painted in 1627 by

Thomas de Keyser, where Huygens was depicted with several instruments on
the desk nearby.
The final and most convincing evidence, however, rests in a comparison
of the physical characteristics displayed in Rembrandt's portrait with those
exhibited in the many known portraits of Huygens. Not only are the eyes of
the same color, brown (whereas in the known portraits of Schtz, his eyes are
blue-gray), but the lips, hair, and hat are all very similar. Moreover, the sitters
in the Rembrandt portrait and the Paulus Pontius engraving of Huygens
dated one year earlier both wear a ring on their little finger.

One may conclude that this fine painting at the Corcoran Gallery was
undoubtedly executed by Rembrandt; it does not depict Heinrich Schtz, but
rather Constantijn Huygens. In this portrait Rembrandt appears to have memorialized the musical accomplishments of the public official and amateur
musician with whom he had dealt on so many occasions.
10 Among the authenticated portraits of Huygens are included an engraving by Paulus Pontius after Van Dyck, which was executed in 1632; a grisaille by Jan Mauris Quinkhard, now in
the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum; a painting by Jah Lievens, housed in the Rijksmuseum; and a
painting by Thomas de Keyser from 1627 that is in the National Gallery in London.

"Edith Greindl, "Un portrait de Constantin Huygens par Rembrandt," Apollo (March

1942), 10-11.

12Else Kai Sass, "Constantijn Huygens- The Musician," in Comments on Rembrandt's Passion
Paintings and Constantijn Huygens's Iconography, by Else Kai Sass, transi. Jean Nixon and David

Hhnen (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1971), 39-61.

l3Greindl, pp. 10-11.

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