Rembrandt van Rijn

Although we know that Rembrandt’s vast print collection gave him ample opportunity to study prints by other artists including Callot, his approach to landscape etching owes little to the French master. In this delicate, distant view of his home city of Amsterdam, Rembrandt contained the entire vista in the lower third of the composition, while leaving a slight film of plate tone on the upper portion to intimate a changing sky. A clump of turf in the foreground leads our eye back through a few watery trails, but Rembrandt’s recession into space is not as measured as that of Callot, nor as stridently symmetrical. The scene is literal, recording recognizable places such as the Old Church and the warehouses of the Dutch East India Company. Rembrandt’s quickly-sketched, calligraphic lines accentuate an overall impression of informality and immediacy.