A Matter of Light and Death: Caravaggio’s Direct Influence on Rembrandt's Work
By Jeremy Caniglia
Rembrandt never visited Italy and his adoption of Italian baroque color palettes and compositional schemes has been widely regarded as an adaptation of their use by Dutch Caravaggisti. Nonetheless, many of Rembrandt’s paintings use compositions and poses familiar to those who study Caravaggio. By historical contextualization and painterly analysis, Caniglia examines the reasons behind striking similarities between Rembrandt’s Lucretia (1666) and Caravaggio’s Borghese David with the Head of Goliath (here dated 1606, following analysis by Vodret). Caniglia further establishes that Rembrandt must have been familiar with (even, perhaps, in possession of) a painted copy or printed etching of Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath. Caniglia also contextualizes the 1666 Lucretia within Rembrandt’s oeuvre and considers the implications of this previously unidentified influence on contemporary views of his work.
