The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna presents for the first time an exhibition dedicated to the outstanding Baroque artists Rembrandt van Rijn and his student Samuel van Hoogstraten.
As Day.Az reports with reference to the museum’s official website, the exhibition “Rembrandt – Hoogstraten: Color and Illusion”, which the museum declares to be the largest exhibition of Rembrandt’s major works ever to come to Austria, represents more 60 paintings and drawings by artists.
It not only examines the relationship between teacher and student, but also places the work of these two artists in a 21st century context. The exhibition includes works on loan from museums around the world, including the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The exhibition highlights Rembrandt’s legendary technique, which captures dramatic scenes through sumptuous use of light and shadow. Similar qualities also became part of the work of Van Hoogstraten, who also experimented with perspective and is known as a painter of architecture.
The exhibition explores the spectacular effects of color and the amazing illusionistic techniques with which Rembrandt and Hoogstraten mesmerized audiences then and now.
The impressive variety of large-scale works by the two Dutch artists clearly conveys the great interest of the time in illusion and perception: the desire for realistic representation, the illusion of the eye, the creation of illusionistic effects – the scenes of Rembrandt and Hoogstraten seem vivid and tangible and, even to today’s eyes, still blur the boundaries between art and reality.
The exhibition “Rembrandt – Hoogstraten: Color and Illusion” will be on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna on Maria Theresa Square until January 25, 2025.