Painting techniques of the masters
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669)
By the time Rembrandt had moved to Amsterdam he was well versed with Baroque painting and was familiar with the techniques of light and shade seen in the works of Caravaggio and the fluid, vigourous brushwork of Rubens. Like Rubens, Rembrandt would have been interested in Titians' later works, were he had explored more reflective moods and discovered a new freedom with brushwork. Of all the baroque painters, it was Rembrandt that became Titians' natural heir, by the middle of the 1630's he had long since abandoned the conventional Dutch smoothness and his paintings already were caked with much more paint that that was strictly necessary for the final effect.
He adorned his subjects with jewellery that looked good enough to steal, vigourously modelling the trinkets with a heavily loaded brush. Where others used five strokes of the brush to create the illusion, Rembrandt used one. The exact imitation of form was being replaced by the suggestion of it, to some of his contemporaries his paintings were considered unfinished.
It was the Venetians that taught him about the use of a brown ground so that his paintings would emerge from the dark to light. Despite his limited palette, Rembrandt was still able to maintain the delicate balance between the tonal range of a painting and the colour. Just as the form was only suggested, so was the impression of rich colour. He worked in complex layers, building up a picture from the back to front with delicate glazes for the spaces combined with the heavy body colour for solid bodies.
Never before had a painter taken such great interest and a pure delight in the properties of the medium itself.