Rembrandt and Saskia at the Fitzwilliam Museum

Wednesday, 14 February 2007 21:36

Cambridge, UK - To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth in 1606, this is the latest in a series of exhibitions of the Fitzwilliam Museum's outstanding collection of the artist’s prints.  It focuses on images of Rembrandt and his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh (1612-42), captured in formal portraits, intimate studies, and works where the artist used Saskia as a model for other subjects.  On exhibition until 11 March, 2007.

Rembrandt’s well-known power to penetrate the human psyche in self-portraits is as powerful in etching as it is in painting. Perhaps even more moving are the informal studies that seem to give us a glimpse into a personal notebook in which the artist documented the appearance of his wife ill in bed, leading to the period of her final illness after the birth of their son Titus.

The Fitzwilliam Museum was described by the Standing Commission on Museums & Galleries in 1968 as "one of the greatest art collections of the nation and a monument of the first importance".  It owes its foundation to Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion who, in 1816, bequeathed to the University of Cambridge his works of art and library, together with funds to house them, to further "the Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation".

Few museums in the world contain on a single site collections of such variety and depth.  Writing in his Foreword to the catalogue of the exhibition for Treasures from the Fitzwilliam which toured the United States in 1989-90, the then Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, wrote that "like the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam addresses the history of culture in terms of the visual forms it has assumed, but it does so from the highly selective point of view of the collector connoisseur.  Works of art have been taken into the collection not only for the historical information they reveal, but for their beauty, excellent quality, and rarity...  It is a widely held opinion that the Fitzwilliam is the finest small museum in Europe".  Visit : www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk