JAN ANTONIDES VAN DER LINDEN
Rembrandt Van Rijn
JAN ANTONIDES VAN DER LINDEN
Etching
1665
An original Rembrandt Van Rijn Etching.
1665
Original etching, engraving and drypoint in black ink on laid paper.
A fine 18th century impression of Bartsch’s fifth and final state, Usticke’s sixth state of seven, New Hollstein’s seventh and final state, with strong contrasts throughout, printed after the plate was skillfully retouched, in which the left border of the gown to the left of the book is sharply defined.
Catalog: Bartsch 264 v/v; Hind 268; Biorklund-Barnard 65-1; Usticke 264 vi/vii; New Hollstein 314 vii/vii.
Sheet size: 4 7/8 x 4 1/16 inches
Jan Antonides van der Linden (1609-64) was a famous physician and a friend of Nicholas Tulp. After working for many years in Franeker, and presenting the city with its botanical gardens, he left in 1651 to become professor of medicine in Leiden.
Rembrandt’s etched portrait of van der Linden was intended to accompany a publication of Hippocrates’s writings on medicine with a commentary by the Dutch physician. The publisher Daniel van Gaesbeecq commissioned the work in 1665; many documents concerning the project have survived. The negotiations for Rembrandt’s part in the book were conducted by Titus. Among the conditions stipulated was that the portrait be engraved. Instead, Rembrandt made an etching, which is propably the reason his portrait of van der Linden was not included in the publication.
The portrait of Jan Antonides van der Linden is Rembrandt’s last known etching. He based this posthumous portrait of a man he had probably never seen on a painted portrait by Abraham van den Temple.
