Schama, Simon; van Rijn, Rembrandt; Rubens, Peter Paul

Rembrandt's Eyes with: Ephemera

ISBN: 067940256X
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House, Inc., 1999. First Edition. Hardcover. "More than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt remains the most deeply loved of all the great masters of painting, his face so familiar to us from the self-portraits painted at every stage in his life, yet still so mysterious. As with Shakespeare, the facts of his life are hard to come by...Rembrandt's Eyes, about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Through a succession of superbly incisive descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt's paintings threaded into this narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh. But this book moves far beyond the bounds of conventional biography or art history. With extraordinary imaginative sympathy, Schama conjures up the world in which Rembrandt moved...above all, the profound effect on him of the great master of the immediately preceding generation, the Catholic painter from Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens: "the prince of painters and the painter of princes" with whom Rembrandt was obsessed for the first part of his life, and whose career was the shaping force that drove Rembrandt to test the farthest reaches of his own originality." (from front & rear flaps) The massive, monumental biographical-critical study of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), the greatest of all Dutch Master Painters- particularly focusing on the influence of the canonical Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) on Rembrandt's work. The author, Simon Schama (b. 1945), is the much-honored & astoundingly prolific British historian, especially of art & the Jewish people. A colossal door-stopper production, lavishly illustrated with reproductions of stunning artworks, mostly of course by Rembrandt, many in vivid color. Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $50 price printed on front flap, "11/99" on rear flap), first edition as stated on copyright page. We found & have retained, between blank rear endpaper & paste-down, Michael Kimmelman's original review of this volume in the New York Times Book Review (no issue date), single leaf of pgs. 19-20 with article on both pages, much-folded & in very fine condition with only inevitable moderate browning, a few short, faint creases & minor edgewear where clipped. A beautiful, magisterial & profound Schama collectible in its rarest original form & with enriching ephemera. Book in very fine condition with only a touch of rubbing & a few very faint scratches to brown-colored front, back covers & spine; a touch of wear to edges & corners of same. Interior very fine with only a hint of light browning at thin blank margins of page leaves. Dust jacket fine with mild-to-moderate rubbing, faint scratching & creasing to front, back covers & spine; very slight wear & some tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same & flaps. An extra handling fee will be added for shipping due to the weight of this item. Very Fine / Fine. [Item #4908]

Price: $90.00