Fashion and fancy: dress and meaning in Rembrandt's paintings

Abstract

Until now dress has played a minor role in the studies of Rembrandt's paintings. This is all the more surprising since the artist clearly delighted in the rendering of clothes. He made extensive use of clothing and jewellery to emphasize the character, religious affiliation or social status of the sitters in his portraits, and to clarify the narrative or heighten the drama in his history pieces. De Winkel fills this lacuna and shows that research of this neglected field can contribute in many and unexpected ways to our understanding of Rembrandt's art. Serious study of the history of dress is itself a rather new field, and was long regarded by art historians as merely ancillary to art history, mainly as a help in matters of dating. However, the knowledge of dress can contribute to the identification of the sitter. It can also help to determine the message the sitter or the artist wished to express. The wider aim of the author is to investigate the possible contemporary connotations of clothes in Rembrandt's painted oeuvre by placing them within a wider cultural and historical context.