The Amsterdam art historian and art dealer Jan Six discovered a previously unknown painting by the Dutch national artist at an auction. As of today, it is on display at the Amsterdam Hermitage The lace collar already reveals Rembrandt’s signature (1606-1669). This is because it is stylistically similar to the wedding portraits of the young Marten Soolmans and his bride Oopjen Coppit, which […]

The Amsterdam art historian and art dealer Jan Six discovered a previously unknown painting by the Dutch national artist at an auction. As of today, it is on display at the Hermitage in Amsterdam

The lace collar already reveals the handwriting of Rembrandt (1606-1669). This is because it is stylistically similar to the wedding portraits of the young Marten Soolmans and his bride Oopjen Coppit, which the Dutch master – who was 28 years old at the time, had been living in Amsterdam for just under three years and was already considered a shooting star – painted in 1634. Jan Six discovered the white collar in the Rembrandt style, which was so popular at the time, on a “Portrait of a Young Man”, which was offered at an auction at Christie’s in London a year and a half ago with the note “Rembrandt circle”. The Dutch art historian and art dealer, once head of the Old Master department at Sotheby’s, bought the 94 x 73 centimeter painting at auction because he thought it was a genuine Rembrandt and had it appraised. Fifteen experts, including Arthur K. Wheelock Jr, curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Norbert Middelkoop, curator at the Amsterdam Museum and Volker Manuth, professor of early modern art at Radboud University in Nijmegen, also share Jan Six’s opinion. The internationally renowned Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering (Rembrandt Research Project, RPP) also confirmed the authenticity of the painting.

According to Marieke van de Winkel, a specialist in Rembrandt’s clothing, a workshop work cannot be ruled out: “The painting was created in the workshop of Uylenburgh. Rembrandt had assistants there who were as close to his style as possible.” Jan Stix commissioned technical painting studies at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Restorers were working on Maarten Soolmans’ portrait there at the same time. “The thread structure on the ‘Portrait of the Young Man’, explains Marieke van de Winkel, “was exactly the same as Maarten Soolmans’. The pigments used and the handwriting also corresponded to Rembrandt’s well-known studio practice. It is the first unknown work by the Dutch national artist for more than 40 years. Rembrandt possibly created the unsigned painting as part of a double portrait. From today, it can be seen at the Hermitage in Amsterdam (until June 15).

www.hermitage.nl/en/rembrandt-hermitage-amsterdam/

www.www.jansix.nl

In a cooperative project of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover, textual contexts in Leibniz’s manuscripts are currently being digitally reconstructed. Whether philosophy, politics or mathematics – Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was involved in every field of knowledge. “Tranquillity is a step up from stupidity”, the universal genius, whose 300th anniversary of death is in 2016, stated in 1715 […]

In a cooperative project of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover, textual contexts in Leibniz’s manuscripts are currently being digitally reconstructed.

Whether philosophy, politics or mathematics – Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was involved in every field of knowledge. “Tranquillity is a step up from stupidity”, the universal genius, whose 300th death anniversary is in 2016, noted in 1715. “One must always find something to do, to think, to design, to be interested in, be it for the public or the individual.” And his inventions have endured to this day: the binary system, differential and integral calculus can all be traced back to the brilliant mathematician. Even when he woke up, the scholar had so many ideas that he didn’t have enough time in the day to write them down. Many of his ideas, drafts and concepts remained unfinished and unpublished. The exceptional talent left around 200,000 manuscript pages to posterity, which are now part of the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage. They are kept together with his letters, the only surviving copy of the four-species calculating machine and his working library in the library named after him in Hanover.

Large parts of his associations have survived on scraps of paper or loose papers. Leibniz himself had cut up the manuscripts in order to organize them thematically later. He used a special cabinet with drawers for this purpose, which is no longer preserved. The so-called Leibniz snippets are currently being restored in a joint project between the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK), the MusterFabrik Berlin, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library and the Leibniz Edition (Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities). The project initially comprises the digitization of fragments of the “Mathematica” collection of documents, a total of almost 10,000 sheets. The individual parts should be reconstructed by March 2017. Michael Kempe from the Leibniz Research Center of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities at the Leibniz Archive of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover is leading the project. “Up to now, the leaf fragments and their affiliation have essentially been done manually as part of library indexing and historical-critical editing,” explains the expert. “Put simply, it’s about digital puzzling, about bringing together text fragments in Leibniz’s mathematical writings with the help of an interactive assistance system to achieve a better chronological and content-related classification of the manuscripts.”

The original state is to be restored

Michael Kempe is particularly interested in how Leibniz thought and when he dealt with certain topics. The aim is to restore the scholar’s outpourings to a chronological order. “The exciting thing is that we are using and adapting software developed by Fraunhofer IPK to reconstruct the so-called Stasi files.” A special scanner built especially for the project by the Berlin software company MusterFabrik creates a pixel-free digital image in Hanover that reproduces the shape, color and watermarks of the fragments without distortion. The individual puzzle pieces are then classified, reassembled using digital image processing and pattern recognition and presented to librarians and editors as prepared reconstruction proposals. “The point of the project is to a certain extent a Leibnizian self-application,” says Michael Kempe happily. “We are trying to trace the genesis of this invention with the help of Leibniz’s own invention, binary arithmetic 0 and 1, the computer language developed from it today.” The project is funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, Heidelberg.