tour 11 of 11
Rembrandt the printmaker
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Great Coppenol, an etching
The formal pose of this large portrait was
probably requested by the sitter. Lieven van Coppenol (1599 - after
1667) was a schoolmaster who became obsessed with calligraphy (the
art of 'beautiful writing') and, it seems, with
portraits of himself. In the same year as this
etching,
he also commissioned an engraved portrait by another artist, and a
smaller etched portrait of himself with his grandson from
Rembrandt. He solicited several poems in praise of the portrait,
which he sometimes inscribed with his fine handwriting in the wide
margin below. Rembrandt has shown him holding up a large sheet of
clean paper, on which he will doubtless display his calligraphic
skills with the quill in his right hand.
The seven known
impressions
of this first
state
are all printed on a yellowish paper imported by the Dutch East
India Company from Japan. Its smooth and less absorbent surface was
especially suitable to print dark tones and films of surface ink
such as Rembrandt has left on Coppenol's sheet of paper and
in the upper right corner. Rembrandt made a sketch in oils for this
print, which shows the composition in reverse (the painting is now
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York).
The ‘Great
Coppenol' was much admired in the eighteenth century, no
doubt for its high finish and
mezzotint-like
appearance. This impression was sold for £57.15.0 in 1798, perhaps
a world record for a print at the time, when an impression of
Rembrandt's Three
Crosses, which is so much more admired today,
cost £1.16.0.