Abstract
This article analyzes the painterly formation of pictorial subjects of embodiment and disembodiment since the early modern period. Starting with Gerhard Richter, Quattrocento painters, and Titian, it focuses on Rembrandt and his late group portrait The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman (1656). The subject of this picture is a dissection of a man’s brain – and hence the surgeons’ search for the seat of the human soul and the motion of life. In the motif of the corpse, Rembrandt performs a radical operation with paint layers that historical sources described with the terms “doodverwe” and “lyffverwe” (“dead color” and “body color”). Rembrandt’s pictorial formation is a distinctly complex answer to the soulless, lifeless corpse’s state of being, which has been reduced to no more than an image. At the same time, the dead body is the place in which Rembrandt reflects the act of painting as a way of working with the tension of embodiment and disembodiment, of giving and taking life, with color.
Abbildungsnachweis: 1 – 5, 31 – 33 Ausst.-Kat. Gerhard Richter. Bilder/Serien 2014 (wie Anm. 1), 39 – 43 und 60f. – 6 – 9 Arasse 1999 (wie Anm. 11), 36f., 18, 42f. und 17. – 10, 11 Ausst.-Kat. Titian. Prince of Painters 1990 (wie Anm. 2), 214. – 12 – 15 Ausst.-Kat. Der späte Tizian 2007 (wie Anm. 26), 299, 355 und 12. – 16, 18, 26, 27, 30 © Amsterdam Museum. – 17 Lightbown 1986 (wie Anm. 72), Farbtafel X. – 19, 20 De Wetering 1997 (wie Anm. 75), 182 und 188. – 21 – 25 © Basel, Universitätsbibliothek. – 28, 29 Ausst.-Kat. Rembrandt Rembrandt 2003 (wie Anm. 31), 163, 165. – 34 Ausst.-Kat. Hans Holbein der Jüngere 2006 (wie Anm. 87), 258.
© 2017 Marianne Koos, published by De Gruyter