![]() The problems began with financial collapse they culminated in the deaths of his partner, Hendrickje Stoffels, and his beloved son, Titus. ![]() Rembrandt was in the midst of his famous fade-out, which his late self-portraits - each one more harrowed and bewildered than the last - document with an exploratory intensity and honesty unmatched in the history of art. So when de Lairesse moved to Amsterdam 30 years later, it was almost inevitable that he would meet Rembrandt - and that Rembrandt would paint him.Īt first, de Lairesse was spellbound. Rembrandt had moved into Hendrick’s studio and married his cousin, Saskia. Van Uylenburgh’s father, Hendrick, was the art dealer who had launched Rembrandt’s career. He moved to Utrecht, in the Netherlands, with another woman, whom he subsequently married, and they had a child in 1665.ĭe Lairesse’s talent was noticed that year by the art dealer Gerrit van Uylenburgh, who persuaded him to move to Amsterdam. (Venereal disease is not the only congenital condition.) He fled the city after entangling himself in an affair with two sisters who had posed for his pictures. Born in Liège, in today’s Belgium, he was an artist himself and the son of a painter. Whereas Rembrandt (1606-1669), at the time he painted the portrait, had only a handful of troubled years to live.ĭe Lairesse meets the great painter’s gaze with perplexed but unyielding dignity. It will be 25 years before he entirely loses his sight, and more than 40 before his life gives out. So you could say that Rembrandt’s painting, wherein shadows encroach on light, has a metaphorical, almost tautological aspect: painting as a kind of fumbling in the dark, a diminution, a dying away.īut wait! De Lairesse isn’t going anywhere. His name is Gerard de Lairesse, and he is suffering from congenital syphilis (a disease that, incidentally, has been steadily rising in the United States in recent years).Īs the infection, inherited from his mother, takes its ineluctable course, de Lairesse (1641-1711) will eventually go blind. This late Rembrandt portrait, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts a man with pockmarked skin and recessed eyes. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience. Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript.
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