Rembrandt and the Female Nude

Rembrandt¿s extraordinary paintings of female nudes ¿ Andromeda, Susanna, Diana and Her Nymphs, Dana¿Bathsheba ¿ as well as his etchings of nude women, have fascinated many generations of art lovers and art historians, but they have also elicited vehement criticism. They were considered against-the-grain, anti-classical, even ugly and unpleasant. However, Rembrandt chose conventional subjects, keeping close to time-honored pictorial schemes, and was well aware of the high prestige accorded to the depiction of the naked female body. Why, then, do these works deviate so radically from the depictions of nude women by other artists? To answer this question the author examines Rembrandt¿s paintings and etchings against the foil of established pictorial traditions in the Netherlands as well as Italy. Exploring Rembrandt¿s intense dialogue with the works of predecessors and peers, the author demonstrates that, more than any other artist, it was Rembrandt¿s purpose to incite the greatest possi