Rembrandt's Nose: Of Flesh And Spirit In The Master's Portraits

Description

In this elegant, witty and delightfully digestible new study, Paris-based scholar Michael Taylor dares to describe precisely how the famed 17th-century Dutch master imbued his portrait subjects with such enduring, almost supernatural, sensual and spiritual vitality. Whether captured mid-breath on the verge of a sneer or a sigh, the answer lies in "Rembrandts Nose".

Reviews

Taylor proves a joy to read. Hitherto a translator of French poetry, he has made himself thoroughly at home with the art historical evidence and he deftly unfolds a life story in precis around the self-portraits and such pictures as the Bathsheba. Taylor's eye seems to keep pace with Rembrandt's brush, here brusque, there punctilious; his diction is chunky and sensual; he loves to imagine, to cast similes, to surf whatever breakers of emotion the picture rolls his way . Peering so keenly, Taylor does indeed touch on the quick of the art, and yet the mystery of its relation to the culture around it stays intact.--Julian Bell"New York Review of Books" (09/21/2007)