The Drawings of Rembrandt: Complete Editionby Rembrandt; Otto Benesch; Eva Benesch

The Drawings of Rembrandt: Complete Edition by Rembrandt; Otto Benesch; Eva BeneschReview by: Peter SchatbornSimiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1975 - 1976), pp. 34-39Published by: Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780351 .

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Otto Benesch, The drawings of Rembrandt: complete edition. Enlarged and edited by Eva Benesch. 6 vols. with 394 pp. of text and I788 ills. London (Phaidon Press) 1973. ? I25*

The six-volume corpus of Rembrandt's drawings by Otto Benesch, which first appeared in the years I954-57, has been brought out in a new edition by the original publisher, Phaidon. Benesch having died in I964, the new edition was seen through the press by his widow and collaborator Eva Benesch, to whom the corpus was dedicated. The illustrations in the first edition were printed in collotype on a tinted paper, while those in the new one are in fine-screen offset on white paper. The tonal values may come out better in this process, with its more fluid modelling and gentler contrasts, but these gains have been achieved at the cost of a slight loss in resolu- tion and legibility.

The new typography of the entries is not, to my mind, a change for the better. All the data between the title and the body of the entry are printed in italics, with no extra leading. As a result, a piece of information like the identity of the present owner-an indispensable handle for the regular user -no longer springs to the eye.

The division of the book has been left unchanged; drawings published by Benesch after I957 and his notes for the new edition have been fitted into the old framework. New drawings have been given A- and B-numbers. This has resulted in a changed numbering of the illustrations, a potential source of confusion that is not compensated by the presumed gain in convenience. The numbering system of the catalogue itself is a problem: beside the new A-numbers there is a residue of a-numbers from the first edition. Moreover, the addenda from volume 6 of the first edition have been inserted in their proper place in the catalogue. Addenda i, for example, is now Benesch OIA, to which has been added parenthetically, for good measure, "Addenda I.

Aside from correcting mistakes in the old edition, Eva Benesch has also made some [bracketed] additions to the text, some of them giving her own view. The latest ownership of the drawings is given, and subsequent literature by Benesch has been incorporated into the entries. The bibliography too has been expanded with Benesch's post-1957 publications, and a choice of writings by others. Only rarely, however, has non-Benesch literature been worked into the entries. The same is true of recent catalogues-a selection has been added to the list of exhibitions, but not incorporated into the individual numbers.

This brings us to the most striking feature of the new edition-it is not up to date. New facts and opinions published by other scholars than Benesch have to all intents and pur- noses been iQnored- This Pives the set more the natuire of a

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revised reprint than of a new "enlarged edition." The "&enlargements" are arbitrary and introduce an imbalance into the book.

In the list of exhibitions, which is actually a key to exhibi- tion catalogues cited in abbreviated form, the authors are sometimes identified and sometimes not. A particularly inex- cusable omission is that E. Haverkamp Begemann is not identified as the author of the important catalogues "New York City I960' and "Chicago i969." Completely missing is A. & C. Tumpel, exhib. cat. Rembrandt legt die Bibel aus, Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) I970. Nor are Christian Tum- pel's other important iconographic studies included in the bibliography. After that, one is not particularly surprised by the omission of J.A. Emmens, Rembrandt en de regels van de kunst, Utrecht I968, and exhib. cat. Bijbelse inspiratie, Amster- dam (Rijksmuseum) I964-65. Even if one accepts the incom- pleteness of the bibliography, one cannot help noticing that iconographic studies seem to have been singled out for neglect. This is utterly unjustified, especially after the recent major contributions of iconography to our knowledge of Rembrandt. More important than ever is Haverkamp Bege- mann's "The present state of Rembrandt studies," Art Bulletin 53 (I97I, pp. 88-I04 (likewise missing from the bibliography).

While the omission of recent literature and exhibitions in the lists and bibliographies is unforgiveable in a publication as monumental as this, one can understand why they have not been worked into the entries. Not only would this have entailed a vast labor, it would moreover have caused chaos in the entries of drawings accepted by Benesch and rejected by others. This might have necessitated a completely new ar- rangement of the catalogue, which was far from Mrs. Benesch's intention. Her husband's work is enshrined whole in the new edition of his magnum opus.

Now that the Benesch corpus has achieved its final form, it is appropriate to consider the way in which it came into being. Especially with regard to problems of authenticity, many of Benesch's judgments have not become scholarly consensus. This in itself does not diminish Benesch's achievement in having given shape to the modern image of Rembrandt as a draftsman. Furthermore, few will dispute that the new edition includes all the known drawings made by Rembrandt, with the exception of a few recent discoveries. The problem is that there is hardly anyone in the field who accepts all or even nearly all the drawings in the corpus as genuine. We cannot get around the fact that there is considerable disagreement as to the attribution of a large number of Benesch's Rembrandt drawings. The question arises as to what extent this is due to the innate complexity of the material, and to what extent it results from Benesch's approach and technique. In this review

* Review translated from the Dutch by Gary Schwartz.



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I will deal only with that basic question. The discussion concerning the authenticity of particular sheets is far too sensitive to be conducted in a review, with a washlist of alternative attributions. In the future I hope to be able to deal with that issue in a more fitting form.

One of Otto Benesch's earliest writings as an art historian was an article of I923 on Rembrandt as a draftsman. Together with his other pieces on Rembrandt, it is included in the first volume of his Collected writings, also edited by Eva Benesch and published, in 1970, by Phaidon. (Hereafter cited as cw.) Not included in that volume is an article of I922 attributing to Aert de Gelder a drawing the author later ad- mitted to his Rembrandt corpus as an "attribution" (A 8I).

This provides an example of what Eva Benesch calls "the problems he encountered in the initial stages of his research in clarifying Rembrandt's drawn oeuvre" (cw, p. 25). And problems there were. Benesch touches on them in the I923 article, making it one of the few writings, along with the introductions to volumes i, 3 and 5 of the corpus, in which he deals with problems of critical methodology. Not that he attempted to construct a system-far from it. It is obvious that his foremost aim was to construct a chronology, which he considered an indispensable tool for determining authenticity. But as he himself puts it, "The material we purpose to authenticate by means of a chronology seems to be needed to formulate it in the first place" (cw, p. 39). This vicious circle is less of a problem for Benesch "in the practical field than in the realm of theoretical approach, which seeks to demonstrate its methodological structure" (cw, p. 39). The acuteness of the dilemma in the practical field depends on the degree of certainty regarding the attribution of particular sheets. Naturally enough, Benesch primes the pump with a group of "unquestionably authentic sheets, either dated by Rembrandt himself or whose dates can be established by documents" (cw, p. 37). This group can be amplified with drawings tied to other dated works through "the establishment of concrete stylistic relationships" (cw, p. 37). Which drawings these are Benesch does not say. The student must seek them out among the entries of the corpus. It is too bad that the introduction to the corpus does not contain a list, like that in Hofstede de Groot's I906 catalogue of Rem- brandt's drawings, of this relatively small nucleus and a summing up of its value as evidence. There are enough cases in which a "secure" drawing raises unanswered questions, and possible alternatives are left undiscussed. Of course Benesch went through the process of defining the nucleus, but the considerations that determined his choice have not been confided to paper. His judgments are not always backed up by sufficient argumentation.

In speaking of his chronology, Benesch says that "anything that can be fitted into a meaningful, historically organic

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sequence has a claim to authenticity, anything that does not, can be rejected without further demur" (cw, p. 39). Ex- perience has borne out the validity of the second half of this rule. Few of the drawings that are difficult to fit into Benesch's chronology are universally accepted as genuine. But the large number of "datable" disputed sheets is all the evidence needed that the establishing of a chronology is only the first step towards establishing a corpus. It is Benesch's great merit to have taken that step.

Benesch's arsenal of criteria and arguments is of course not limited to placing the drawings within a chronology. He has other ways of demonstrating the authenticity of borderline cases and defending his attributions against criticism.

USE OF LANGUAGE

In his characterization of drawings, it seems to me, Benesch is far too ready with superlatives, laudatory suggestions and foregone conclusions. A good example of his use of writing to convey a positive impression is his discussion of the "Munich" drawings 967 and 968 in cw, p. 92. Both are "impressionistic" sheets (although Benesch denies this), which are widely regarded as imitations. In the case of these drawings, which Benesch is virtually alone among scholars in accepting, he seems to have fallen back on more subjective ground, despite the author's own warning that "we must disregard all such criteria as for instance personal taste" (cw, p. 45). It must have been his own preferences that led him to include these and several other drawings in the corpus. Of course it is no crime to use "literary" language in a catalogue as long as it serves to express appreciation. In Benesch, however, appreciation often seems to modulate unnoticeably into argument, making it difficult to weigh his judgments.

PREPARATORY DRAWINGS

In the above-mentioned article on Rembrandt as a draftsman, Benesch notes the special status of preparatory drawings for etchings or paintings (cw, pp. 37-38). Rembrandt made "designs, projects for a certain work of art" and "studies... preparatory to a particular part of it." Expatiating on this idea, Benesch says that Rembrandt never followed this process via "step by step designs." The truth of this is borne out in the corpus, where one gets a taste of the full complexity of the possible relations between drawings and finished works. This comes out nowhere more clearly than in Benesch's richly shaded qualifications: "study for... preparatory drawing for. ., used for... study in connection with .., probably connected with ... more or less connected with ... recalls.. . before or after completion of... used by pupil ... project for alteration of [a painting] ... preparatory for [another drawing] ... served as a model for... project for unknown work... preliminary



36

step towards a great painting," etc. In itself it is a good thing that Benesch tries to capture the

exact nuance of the relationship between one work and another. But he does not always succeed in defining that nuance for the reader or drawing consistent boundaries between one kind of relationship and another. Of course there are hard-core cases of a drawing being a "design for" another work. One example is drawing 768, the portrait of Jan Six, whose contours were actually traced over onto the etching ground of Bartsch 285. In drawing 98, on the other hand, which Benesch calls a "detail study for the etching B[artsch] I 17, The Conversion of Saul," the figures are in a completely different relation to each other than in the etching, and moreover the two works are not in mirror image. This should have been pointed out, if only to acknowledge the possibility that the drawing was made after the etching. The same kind of relationship is cited at drawing A 28 as evidence that "increases the probability of its [the drawing's] being a pupil's work." And when Benesch calls many of the "Munich" group "preparatory drawings for known portraits" (cw, p. 83), this will hardly impress the scholars who consider the drawings in question to be imitations. In his comments on drawing 63, Benesch calls Stechow the victim of a "misconception of the meaning of 'Vorstudie`" because Stechow's suggested dating conflicted with Benesch's chronology. Benesch's own conception of a "Vorstudie" is equally open to attack. Drawing 93, for example, is called a "preparatory drawing, in the same direction, for the painting of I633 in Munich, dG I30, Bredius 548." But the sheet is denied by many to Rembrandt, and has most recently been assigned to Nicolaes Moeyaert by Astrid Tumpel in her monograph on that master. Which goes once more to show how tricky a "conception" Vorstudie can be.

Another example: drawing I02 is a "project for an unknown work by Rembrandt from which the school painting Zacharias in the Temple, dG 72, Bredius 542 seems to derive." As this second-degree parentage would lead one to expect, the figures in drawing and painting display only a general resemblance to each other. When Benesch says that Bredius 542 "seems" to derive from an unknown work for which drawing I02 is a "project," he is hardly doing justice to the hypothetical nature of the suggestion. Then again, in dis- cussing drawing I071, which Munz had related to a figure in the etching of Christ presented to the people (Bartsch 76), Benesch objects that "the resemblance... is too general for us to assume a direct connection." Another possibility, as K.G. Boon wrote in the I964 Bulletin van het Ryksmuseum, nr. 3-4, p. go, is that the drawing, which Benesch dates about i650, is related to a figure for the Hundred-guilder print (Bartsch 74). Resemblances in style and format with a study for the print, drawing i88, could also point in the same direction.

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The picture that emerges is of a complexity that surpasses the subtlety of Benesch's terminological gradations. Perhaps the problem is that he doesn't draw a sharp enough distinction between the concrete, factual relations and the hypothetical ones, and that this vitiates all his proofs in the long run.

COMPARISONS Many of Benesch's comparisons are hard to follow. One isn't always sure what is being compared to what. Some of the comparisons serve to help establish the chronology, but others are concerned with authenticity, and there one could have wished for full particulars. Drawing 682, for example, is given by Valentiner to Aert de Gelder, but according to Benesch "a simple comparison with No. 68i proves the authenticity of the drawing." Likewise of drawing 6io, "the comparison with No. 640 makes the attribution a certainty" and of 4I8A "comparison with similar scenes of movement of the middle of the i630's (e.g. Nos. 445 and 97) proves the undoubted authenticity..." Benesch may be right, but the comparisons seem to me to be too baldly stated.

When a comparison is not anchored to an undisputed sheet, there is always the danger that although the comparison itself may be valid, it tells us nothing about authenticity or dating. Drawings 967 and 968 are dated by Benesch to i655 because 967 has "intimate stylistic connections" with 956, a study for Quintus Fabius Maximus at Suessa (Bredius 477): "The riders and horses are almost identical. Nor should there be any need for further proof that both sheets are by Rembrandt" (cw, p. go). But the painting as well as drawing 956 are doubted by other scholars, who also consider 967 and 968 imitations. Of 494, widely regarded by others as a copy, Benesch says: "A comparison with Nos. 493, 495 and 66i proves that the drawing is an original." But 493 and 495 are attributed to Philips Koninck, the latter as a copy after Rembrandt. Comparing one questionable work with another is hardly the kind of method calculated to bring Benesch's critics to their knees.

QUALITY It goes without saying that "quality" is an important criterion for Benesch, and that the authenticity of most of the drawings is determined ultimately by this standard. In view, however, of the present situation in regard to the entire complex of drawings by Rembrandt and his school, one is forced to conclude that quality is not a viable criterion. Unavoidably, art historians disagree exactly about the critical borderline area, the drawings which were made either by Rembrandt or a good pupil imitating him. In Benesch, appreciative epithets sometimes masquerade as identifiable characteristics which are then used as tools for attribution. A classic example is drawing 653A: "The invention is of a



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grandeur and a human immediacy of which only the genius of Rembrandt was capable." Then there is IO67, whose "superior quality... forbids its attribution to any other ar- tist, " which has not prevented various other scholars from attributing it to Aert de Gelder. In one of the last entries in the corpus (A II7), Benesch seems to admit the relativity of quality as a criterion: "The drawing is of excellent quality but not by Rembrandt."

"ATTRIBUTIONS" Numbers preceded by the letter A are "attributions," drawings whose authenticity is doubted by Benesch. This use of the word, although sanctioned by tradition, remains peculiar. In fact the vast majority of drawings in the catalogue are attributions, except that they happen to be accepted by Benesch. As one might expect, this category calls for more detailed argumentation than the rest. The comparisons here tend to be more concrete, and often embrace technique as well as style. But the discussion is not free of such intangible criteria as "hesitation ... indecisiveness ... weakness ... lack of vigour... power... grasp of form." The opinions of other scholars are cited concisely and briefly discussed. (The brevity is not impolite: the judgments Benesch cites are more often than not phrased as sparingly as his own.) Some examples: "Valentiner's doubts are entirely unjustified"; Wich- man's doubts concerning drawing i i85 "can be excused only by the misleading impression given by the reworking" (Benesch in a masterful mood); Valentiner's objection to I037 "can be explained only psychologically through a chronological misunderstanding of technique and style" (Benesch being condescending); yet another of Valentiner's hesitations, when he suggested that A 84 may be by Drost, is "without any cogent reason." Yet it seems to me that Benesch dealt with his "Attributions" more cautiously in the latter volumes of the new edition and that he makes fewer categorical pronouncements. In the closing essay of the Collected writings (p. 268), Benesch writes: "The 'Attributions' category is swelled by sheets which have many features that tell of Rem- brandt, because no one is bold enough to make a definite deci- sion." From the way he says it, one understands that Benesch too was no longer as bold as he once was. But I would deny that making "definite decisions" is the point of the exercise. These can only be made concerning drawings for which we have sufficient evidence, whether in the form of facts, arguments or scholarly consensus. A previous generation of art historians seemed to be more inclined to attribute than to de- attribute. Today there is a tendency to be more critical, to give as much credence to a solidly reasoned de-attribution as to a sober attribution. Nor is there anything to prevent one from reserving judgment, as Benesch does more and more in the last volume of the corpus.

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HANDWRITING

One aspect of connoisseurship that Benesch seldom discusses in print is the handwriting of a draftsman. He describes techniques and characteristics of drawing styles, but when it comes to making decisions, he seems to let content weigh more heavily than form. In the Collected writings (p. 37) he quotes Dvorik saying that in connoisseurship, "as in the comparison of handwriting in the study of ancient documents, we can extract objective criteria out of the total material for any one period or group of monuments, without being affected by subjective impressions, criteria which may vary according to the type of work of art in question." But if Benesch did make a study of handwriting, he did not apply the results systematically-certainly not in his discussions of authenticity.

COMPOSITION/COPIES

Neither have the compositional values in Rembrandt's drawings been defined very precisely, as Benesch remarks in the introduction to volume 5. He says this in connection with the copies he includes, whose "selection assumes a preliminary character and is intended to show possibilities rather than clearly defined facts." There are in fact more borderline cases than usual in this category, sheets which may have been better called "Attributions." (And of course there are possible copies among the "Attributions.") In the case of one drawing which Benesch published as a copy, the original later turned up. We all know what he meant when he called this a "happy day for the art historian" (cw, p. 262).

Benesch's refusal to accept drawing c 4I, Cottage with a white paling, even after having seen the original, is a mystery. His opinion that "the execution is not up to the level of the powerful conception" is shared by no one. The entry on this drawing is a good illustration of how unfortunate it is that recent literature has not been worked into the catalogue: no mention is made of Christopher White's discovery (Bur- lington Magazine Iio [I968], pp. 390-94) that the sheet is dated I648 and not I642 or I652.

I CONOGRAPHY

In the introduction to volume 3 Benesch discusses icono- graphical investigations, warning against assigning the same date to drawings with the same subject. Before a chronological framework was established, this was fairly common practice. In the Collected writings (p. 276, note I4) he says the same, which is all he has to say about "works with identical iconographic content." The opportunity that such works provide to study Rembrandt's approach to iconography is not seized by Benesch. The recent discoveries in this field, notably those of Christian Tiimpel, were unknown to Benesch. This is all the more a pity since iconography can play a role in our judgment of borderline cases. As Tumpel has pointed



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out, the pupils did not always understand Rembrandt's to identify them all, if only because several important interpretation of his subjects, and sometimes misinterpreted printrooms have laid down their drawings on mounts. In the key details. A comparative study of iconography in the work final essay in the Collected writings (p. 254) Benesch observes, of Rembrandt and his pupils may well turn up unexpected by way of exception, that one particular watermark recurs criteria of authenticity. on several different drawings. Although watermarks have no

Tumpel has been kind enough to provide me with an established value at the moment, they are nonetheless worth example of this kind of thing. Drawing c 70 (illustrated in publishing if only because they are one of the rare concrete H. M. Rotermund, Rembrandts Handzeichnungen und Ra- aspects of connoisseurship. Jeroen Giltay of the printroom of dierungen zur Bibel, Stuttgart I963, nr. 242) shows Christ the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam has with an aureole, although the moment depicted precedes his graciously allowed me to publish a recent finding of his in revelation to the apostles of his rising. In similar instances, this area: drawing 29, in the Boymans, has a watermark Rembrandt himself left the aureole out (cf. drawing 987). identical with Churchill 284, of i627. In this case the water- This makes it unlikely that the sheet is an accurate copy after mark helps corroborate Benesch's dating of I629, the kind the master. of help a connoisseur should not want to miss if it can be had.

SIGNATURES AND INSCRIPTIONS CHANGED ATTRIBUTIONS

A signature or inscription on a drawing qualifies it in the eyes Despite Benesch's positive manner of expressing himself, he of Benesch to serve as a point of reference in authenticating has changed his mind about more than one drawing. In four other sheets. Not even this, however, is a universally accepted decades of Rembrandt research, this could hardly be other- practice, and with good reason. The best-known disputed wise. We have already cited the Aert de Gelder drawing later sheets in this area are the views of England (785-88), two of attributed to Rembrandt. With the appearance of the new which bear a "signature." For Benesch "the authentic edition, one no longer has to comb the literature for examples. signature [is] documentary evidence of [the] genuineness" The old and new opinions are now printed side by side. of drawing 786, but Lugt and others consider the entire Given Benesch's habit of overstating his case, this sometimes group to be fakes. The "signed" drawing c 4I "seems to has a comical effect. The Collected writings also contains such render an original by Rembrandt with wrong spelling how- revisions, as on p. I25: ". . .undoubtedly a work by Rembrandt ever." But the same inscription recurs on various other from his late period (Ben. A 89 [expresses some doubts]).. drawings, as on the verso of 465 (vaguely visible on fig. 554). On the other hand, Benesch says of the autograph notes on One can get an idea of Benesch's general conclusions from his the back of A 96a that "the fact of the authenticity of the attractive little book Rembrandt as a draughtsman, published handwriting is no absolute proof for the authenticity of the in I960 after the closing of the first edition of the corpus. drawing." In this special field the art historian might be well The text is short and reads rather well. The expressive advised to enlist the aid of a graphologist before deciding writing of Benesch's descriptions and interpretations forms what writing is authentic and what isn't. a parallel of kinds to Rembrandt's "expressive" draftsman-

ship. Benesch whips up the reader's enthusiasm for the PROVENANCE drawings all the more easily by integrating his personal Benesch has not done original research into provenances: responses into the art-historical argumentation. these are mainly taken over from older publications. Of the By comparison, Bob Haak's recent book Rembrandt: Zeich- problematic sheets in Munich he says: "Large portions of the nungen (Cologne 1974) is notably sober. The down-to-earth drawings must have come straight from Rembrandt's studio text proceeds from the facts, touching on problem after prob- estate, particularly items regarded of no commercial value lem as it fills in a sketch of the kinds of drawings Rembrandt which were sold at the auction in I657" (CW, p. 255). Even if made, their themes, techniques and development. The writing this could be proved, however, it would not help us to does not carry the reader along, as Benesch's does. The differ- distinguish between autograph and other sheets. Very seldom ence is not one of literary skill but of a changing conception of does the provenance of a drawing substantiate an attribution. how art history should be written. One exception are the drawings in the Six album amicorum As sympathetic as Benesch's view of Rembrandt may be, the last Rembrandt drawings to require outside support. the remaining unsolved questions of authenticity can benefit

most from the down-to-earth approach. This is not to belittle WATERMARKS Benesch or deny his lasting importance. The cool scholarly Even in the entries on drawings whose watermarks have been manner will never be able to satisfy the many non-specialists published (e.g., those in the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum) who are keenly interested in art and in Rembrandt, and who Benesch does not identify watermarks. It will never be possible will continue to seek in the literature a more personal



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appreciation of his work. The most abiding contribution of Otto Benesch to Rem- No single criterion will be able to help us crack the remnant brandt scholarship has been the assembly of the drawings,

of disputed drawings, if indeed the problems they pose are at sorting them selectively and arranging them chronologically. all capable of solution. Even when all the facts have been If we take his more categorical statements with a grain of salt, assembled and all the arguments weighed, it will still not be his corpus remains a rich source of major and minor easy to fix critical priorities. In the nature of things, it will be comparisons, suggestions and points of view that can help us impossible to find a theory and corresponding method that draw the line between the work of Rembrandt and his pupils. will help us with all the drawings. Each individual sheet Our progress in defining Rembrandt's wuvre is apparently spawns its own "theory," as it were. Nonetheless, it will proceeding in stages. If one realizes that, then the positive certainly be a great help when the results of the Rembrandt side of Benesch's achievement must prevail in the final Research Project have been published and Sumowski's book judgment over our criticisms. After all, one can hardly blame on the drawings of the Rembrandt school has appeared. him for not having been able to take two steps at a time.

PETER SCHATBORN



Documents

The Drawings of Rembrandt: Complete Editionby Rembrandt; Otto Benesch; Eva Benesch