I discovered a new word last week – it’s an art-historical term, but one which is actually very applicable to modern-day life: it is the phenomenon of the tronie. A tronie is a recording of a silly facial expression. These days, of course, many people record these on their iphones as ‘selfies’ , post them on Instagram or even message-dissolve them to each other on snap-chat. But three-hundred years ago Rembrandt recorded them on velum, oak panels and copper plates.
What made Rembrandt the king of the tronie? And why did he do them? In The Power of Art Schama writes that Rembrandt was one of the most honest artist auto-biographers of all time and that he recorded observations of himself with more penetration of insight and honesty than any other Protestant painter of the period. We see this detached and curious observation of his own external morphology and the changes that took place over time, in the astonishingly long catalogue raisonée of Rembrandt’s self-portraits. From a swarthy young man, through a precious middle period and on to brow-beaten middle age, Rembrandt appears to us in all the forms he took in his life. Perhaps this meticulous self-documentary explains why Rembrandt has always appealed with such force and strength to art historians and biographers: he gives us such a clear sense of himself.
Of course he didn’t draw the line with self-portraiture. The same morbid curiosity for realism that would find him eventually painting a dissection scene, applied to all those to whom he was close to – especially his young wife Saskia. His impressionistic, beautifully-articulated love affair with the human face finds its highest expressions in some of his graphic nocturnes – portraits he sketched of his wife while she slept. There she is: Saskia, asleep in her bed-box with her face nestled against a plump goose-down cushion. In these drawings, she appears to us with such vivacity and realism – with her upturned, pinched nose and fat cheeks, that for me, this album is a universal expression of the tenderness we exercise towards those whom we love while they sleep.
Anyway, enough Saskia, enough Rembrandt – that is all stuff for the next story. Now I speak of tronies because the mercurial, silly, importunate expressions that Rembrandt records drolly, whimsically, perhaps in a bored or flippant mood, remind me strongly of Lukas – that is, of the Magpie. The Alexandrine-blue eyes, fair hair, wobbly nose – there something about Lukas
which is highly reminiscent of the famous Dutch Golden Era artist.
833 words a day 