Rembrandt Van Rijn
The greatest artist of
the Dutch school was Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69).. He was a master
of light and shadow whose paintings, drawings, and etchings made him
a giant in the history of art. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was
influenced by the work of Caravaggio and was fascinated by the work
of many other Italian artists. When Rembrandt became established as
a painter, he began to teach and continued teaching art throughout
his life.
In 1655, in his
late period, 13 years after his so-called "Night Watch" (the
accurate title is "The Shooting Company of Captain Frans Banning
Cocq"), Rebrandt van Rijn painted "The Slaughtered Ox", a dark
picture of an ox, slaughtered, the innards removed, a big corpse of
meat and fat hanging in a room, as if crucified upside down. Apart from a woman
in the background, hardly to be seen, there is nothing else in the
room. Years before, he had already painted another work with the
same title and motif, but very much different. In this early work
it's a part of everyday-life, a woman is cleaning the floor, wiping
the blood, with the ox's head in the foreground.
Like on that early oil painting, a slaughtered animal was already
before to been seen on paintings of Dutch masters, but always as
additional features of different main themes: marriages, seasons,
rural life. On this painting by Rembrandt, in 1655, it's the very
first time, that a dead animal, thought to serve as a human meal, is
presented on its own as a work of art: a metaphor of death,
sacrifice and human existence depending on a body to be fed. We
don't know if his work caused a scandal, but it's true, that unlike
many of his other paintings, it was totally unloved and people
viewing it shaked their heads.
