Home    Essays                                                                                Art History - June 2008

Rembrandt van Rijn: Aristotle with a Bust of Homer

This large scale imaginary portrait painting of Aristotle is amongst the most famous of Rembrandt’s works, and was once the highest selling work of art in history, labelled the ‘Million Dollar Rembrandt’ when obtained via auction in 1961 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.¹

The painting was commissioned by Don Antonio Ruffo, a wealthy Sicilian aristocrat and Rembrandt's only foreign patron, who had asked Rembrandt for a portrait of a philosopher. The artist sent the painting to Messina, Sicily in 1654 and was paid 500 Dutch gulden for it, which would have been about four times the price of a comparable Italian work. He later painted two companion pieces for Ruffo, depicting Homer and Alexander the Great, and it would seem that Ruffo was endeavouring to create a gallery of scholars, as he also commissioned additional works on this theme from numerous other artists.²

What may at first glance appear simply to be a fantasy portrait of a renowned philosopher, is in actuality anything but straightforward. Is he really just Aristotle or is it in fact a representation of the personae of Rembrandt himself, almost a kind of masked self portrait, or even a presentation of melancholia for the sake of popular fashion. Is it even Aristotle at all; other possibilities have been proposed, including that of a great painter of antiquity; Apelles.³ Furthermore, in portraying Homer, Rembrandt reveals a certain fixation with the theme of blindness to which he turns to often, for example; having portrayed Homer as the subject for another portrait as well as depictions of Tobit and of Isaac. This preoccupation may stem from a close association with blindness: it has been suggested that Rembrandts father may have been blind, or being an artist and someone to whom sight was anyway clearly a crucial and dominant sense - he may have feared for his own eyesight.

Aristotle, the renowned Greek philosopher and scientist of the fourth century B.C., is shown in his library richly dressed in the robes perhaps of a Renaissance humanist, ‘those of a man who does not need to work,’ though this attire has no known historical model, it reflects his position as someone wealthy and successful. Further to this, he wears a wide brimmed hat and a gold ring along with a sweeping ornate chain. This golden chain is seen by Professor Julius Held, “as an allusion to a reference in the Iliad to the ‘golden chain of being,’ this seems to link all three figures in mutual admiration.” ⁴ Aristotle rests his hand on a bust of blind Homer, the greatest of Greek poets who lived three centuries earlier, who in contrast to Aristotle is shown to be poor, a man who according to legend neither sought nor received much money from his art and was therefore perhaps more true to his calling. Clark Hulse in an essay on reading paintings remarks that, “the hand of Aristotle is an implement not just of sense but of reason; indeed, it is the most specifically human instrument of reason, ....and an extension of sight, to blind Homer it is the instrument that substitutes for sight in his knowledge of the physical world.” ⁵

The image was painted in Rembrandts typically looser, rapid and more spontaneous style of working that he had developed by this later period. Sir Joshua Reynolds commented on Rembrandts style, that “works produced in an accidental manner, will have the same free unrestrained air as works of nature, whose particular combinations seem to depend upon accident.” ⁶

Rembrandt was a student and collector of antique sculpture, a large quantity of which was being sold in Holland in the seventeenth century. The busts were at the time extremely expensive but highly desirable, seen as the “inspiration of poets and artists..., no fashionable collection could be without one.” ⁷ The bust of Homer was certainly painted from one of many Hellenistic plaster or marble busts within Rembrandts own varied and extensive collections. He had at least twenty eight busts of roman emperors and other persons, though it is not firmly known how many of these were antique originals, or plaster casts. This bust would seem to be the one listed as no. 163 in his inventory, along with busts of Aristotle and Socrates; located in the Kunst Caemer (gallery) of his home. Rembrandt depicted sculpture within his paintings on several occasions; the art historian Kenneth Clarke made an observation that “all the sculpture in his work is disturbingly animated,” ⁸ and the bust of Homer is indeed imbued with a strikingly lifelike quality.

This painting is a product of the latter period of Rembrandts life, and as with much of the work from this period, the cumulative effects of upheaval and tragedy within the artists life appear to show. It is one of a series of dark, loosely painted pictures, mainly self portraits and religious subjects, which share the reflective, introspective nature of this painting. Aristotle, the ageing philosopher in his decline is embraced by the deep muddy gloom, blurring the outline of his figure. The shadows upon Aristotle's face accentuate his melancholic visage, as he stares out beyond the bust, lost in a deep sombre contemplation stimulated by contact with these two tokens of contrary genius: of Homer; representative of the artistic and spiritual aspects of being, contrasting with that of Alexander; the embodiment of the turbulence and impermanence of material, worldly success. The image almost seems to contain a consciousness, and to reveal the soul of the subject and no doubt, that of the anxious artist as he too contemplates the importance of true artistic integrity against worldly fame. Rembrandts approach rejects convention, avoiding what he may have viewed as the false idealism apparent in most works of the period, instead choosing a sometimes almost disturbing, intimate level of realism.

As Oscar Wilde stated through the character of the artist Basil Hallward in ‘Dorian Gray,’ “..Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely an accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.” Furthermore, referring to the portrait of Dorian, he fears that he has, “shown in it the secret of my own soul.” ⁹ This is certainly the impression conveyed by this portrait of Aristotle, and numerous other works.

Regarding the melancholic nature of the philosopher himself, as presented by Rembrandt; “Aristotle wrote that all truly outstanding men, including philosophers, were melancholic. This remark was widely current in the renaissance, ...Rembrandt could have known it and applied it to Aristotle himself.”¹⁰ Like Rembrandt, Aristotle had been wealthy and successful for a long period but then fell into difficulty. A friend and mentor to Alexander the Great; the medal and chain sweeping across is interpreted by Professor Julius Held to be an honorific gift from Alexander. After his death, Aristotle was driven out by the Athenians who had resented his close relationship with Alexander, and he ended his days as an exile. In his study of the painting, Held suggests that “the melancholy reflections of Aristotle involve an awareness of the fickleness of princely favour.”¹¹ Rembrandt could no doubt empathise, as his fortunes waned during this period; he was heavily in debt, soon forced to sell his collections including this Homeric bust and had already endured great emotional upheaval; his first wife and three of his four children having died some years previously, and he was at this point in a relationship with Hendrickje Stoffels that was the cause of considerable controversy.

Even before any of this, it could be deduced that Rembrandt was not wholly of a happy disposition: his first known painting at the age of nineteen being a martyrdom; ‘the Stoning of St Stephen,’ in which he paints himself amongst the crowd of onlookers. This is the first of many instances of Rembrandt appearing within his own pictures, though not it would appear purely as the result of egotism. In the words of Nigel Spivey, “the perplexed young man we see present at a martyr’s death is claiming no halo of special piety: he is simply there; as he would be - angry and afraid.”¹² And so with subsequent depictions, in his portraits “however much he dresses up, he is always undisguised.”¹³ Rembrandt, as self aware and melancholic as he appears does not however lack a confidence in his abilities and experience as an artist. His ‘Self portrait at the age of 63,’ at Kenwood House has been seen as “a form of self-heroization,”¹⁴ but is nonetheless honestly self knowing, self assured but lacking in arrogance.

There is however an interesting counterpoint to this notion that the melancholic appearance of the imagery is simply a reflection of the melancholia of Rembrandt himself, whether due to his nature or his circumstances. Death was all around in a more immediate sense than would typically be experienced in the Holland of today, and perhaps marginally more expected and accepted. It has been suggested also, that his lesser output from the mid 1640’s was more the result of his affluence and decreased need to work, than any serious decline in his popularity as an artist. The fact that he obtained a commission from an Italian patron, Don Ruffo; the Italians being notoriously dismissive of the works of non Italian painters, supports this. His bankruptcy in the years shortly after the painting of this Aristotle may have been more due to his significant losses at the Amsterdam Bourse,¹⁵ compounding his long term overspending to a final financial breaking point.

Another important factor: in Rembrandt’s time there was “a prestige attached to sadness, to look afflicted was a fashionable trait, much affected by scholars, lovers and gentlemen.” King Charles I and Cosimo de Medici were both owners of Rembrandt self portraits; for what other reason than this fashion would they wish “to boast one Dutchman’s doughy, troubled visage?”¹⁶ This trend may have been partly influenced by the then popular writings of Aristotle, who it has already been stated, viewed ‘outstanding men’ as prone to melancholia.