Listen to the episode here.
1 Signature
My topic for now is the signature of Rembrandt as it is placed under his artwork.
Let’s first decide what a signature is. A signature serves to identify a person. When a person signs a certain document, they are indicating their agreement with its contents. The person has been identified and their agreement with the text in the document is established. By placing their signature, the person concerned places ‘… a sign or a sequence of signs, applied by hand, electronically or by any other process, by which a person identifies himself and which shows his expression of will’. To keep it simple, for demonstration purposes, I have taken the wording from the rather recent text of Article 8.1, 2° of the Belgian Civil Code.
A signature can therefore be the formal signature, just the initials, or also a specific sign or figure. There are, of course, abundant examples: a signature on a letter, an application form, on a document indicating that a purchased product has been delivered to your home, but also an electronic signature when purchasing a washing machine.
Before signatures gradually came into use in the 16th century, the authenticity of a document was guaranteed by means of a seal. Nowadays, some charters or deeds are sometimes provided with a real or fictitious wax seal, with or without a ribbon. Several of you will have fond memories of having received such a certificate when you were awarded your degree or your doctorate.
Only in 1811, when civil registration was introduced throughout the Netherlands, was the family name officially recorded for everyone. Emperor Napoleon forced people who did not yet have a surname to adopt one and have it recorded. This happened in so-called name adoption registers (‘registers van naamsaanneming’). It took several decades before all surnames were registered and written according to a fixed spelling.
2 Signing with X
Such a sign or figure can be a mark (for instance a +, plus sign) or just one letter, for example the X. Signing with an X (in Dutch ‘tekenen bij het kruisje’) is a phenomenon that goes back several centuries and has its roots in illiteracy.
Evidence of this practice can be found in the 17th century story of Rembrandt and his life companion at the time, Hendrickje Stoffels. In 1661, Hendrickje gave testimony about a ‘… drunken surgeon’, who forced everyone who passed him to fight with him. She attested (‘getuyght‘) and signed with a +.
In Hendrickje’s will from the same year, she appointed her child Cornelia van Rhijn (‘haer kindt Cornelia van Rhijn’) as her heir, and Rembrandt, Cornelia’s father (‘her own father’), as guardian. The couple were not married. The notary and the witnesses signed the will. The document states ‘This sign + made by the Testatrix Hendricke (Stoffels)’. Indeed, it is believed in art history literature that Hendrickje made her mark in this way because she was illiterate.
3 Signing a painting
For a confident artist, signing a work of art is a must. If I limit myself to paintings, a signature confirms the identity of the person who has created the work of art. In this way, the artist is identified as the creator, their signature confirms that the work is ready and saleable, and it gives the work value as a finished product.
To be identified, a signature must not be too small, inconspicuous, or difficult to find. The signature must also be legible. It should also be added using material that is certain not to fade over time. To meet the expectations of a potential buyer, artists still sign in the bottom corner (left or right). After all, that’s in general where a collector will look first.
In the first 40 years of the 17th century, there was no guild for painters in Leiden. However, there was one in Amsterdam. Regardless of whether Rembrandt was already a member of this guild in 1631, as far as I can tell there were no regulations for signing a work of art.
4 Rembrandt’s signature
Fortunately, the signature that Rembrandt used in his daily transactions has been preserved.
Though there are few existing documents about Rembrandt, we do have his signature on six receipts for apprenticeship fees for Isaac de Jouderville. These were written between May 1630 and November 1631. In all documents, Rembrandt spelt his name ‘Rembrant’ – so without the ‘d’. Mind you, in those days there was no standardized language and sometimes letters were written phonetically. When it comes to the use of names, one can come across three or four variations in spelling, with differences in letters (characters): the ‘ij’ (still common in the Dutch language) sometimes being ‘y’, the ‘c’ sometimes ‘k’, the ‘k’ sometimes ‘ck’, and the ‘d’ sometimes ‘t’.
In placing his signature, Rembrandt follows the custom that in the early modern Dutch period individuals generally used a patronymic as a defining middle name or surname.
Many names have the suffix ‘dr’, indicating a female person (being a daughter (‘dochter’) of the name preceding the suffix) and ‘z’ indicating a male person, being the son (‘zoon’) of the preceding name. Jan Pieterszoon and Lysbeth Cornelisdochter were abbreviated to -sz and -dr, thus to Jan Pietersz and Lysbeth Cornelisdr.
Sometimes – as was done in the 17th century – names were latinized (e.g. Douza, Grotius or Torquinius). Rembrandt’s discoverer Constantijn Huygens refers in his diary to ‘Rembrandtio’.
A short word on De Jouderville (1612–1645/48). He was an orphan whose parents came from the northern part of France. He became Rembrandt’s second pupil (after Dou) when he was 17 years of age. Today, Jouderville is mainly known for portraits, historical allegories, and tronies in Rembrandtesque style. In this way, he was such a faithful follower of his master’s early work that several of his paintings were previously attributed to Rembrandt.
De Jouderville was apprenticed to Rembrandt for two years at an annual fee of 100 guilders. This fee only covered tuition and did not include boarding and lodging (which Rembrandt did not provide). Training to become a painter was rather expensive, especially with the more famous masters such as Rembrandt. Expensive training, with no success as a young independent master guaranteed!
![[Portrait of Rembrandt in oriental dress by Isaac de Jouderville;
The Leiden collection https://theleidencollection.com]](https://www.rembrandtsmoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IJ-100-Isaac_Jouderville-Portrait_of_Rembrandt_in_Oriental_Dress-214x300.jpg)
5 Rembrandt signing as an artist
You can see Rembrandt’s signature on the image used for this podcast.
In his 1982 study, Josua Bruyn delivered a descriptive survey of the Rembrandt signatures. Bruyn notes: ‘The basic shape of the R … stays the same: the stem is carried on into a curve sweeping upwards and then continuing as the bowl of the letter on the right of the stem (the R ‘closed’ on the left), with a loop forming at the point where this curve again approaches the stem on its right at mid-height before the line again continues into the oblique tail. The shape of the bowl and the size of the loop do however vary.’ So now you will understand the shape of the ‘R’ I used for the cover of my book and the image that is used for the podcast ‘Rembrandt’s Money’.
Beware, however, that in those days the master painter (Rembrandt) might well have signed a painting made by an extremely talented pupil. It was quite customary to start professional training as a painter from around the age of 13 or 14. Once the pupil was already well on his way, one specific exercise was to make copies of the work of the master. Advanced students were allowed to assist the master painter, and sometimes parts of a painting was actually painted by an advanced student. If necessary, the student’s work could be corrected by his master. It was not uncommon for a more advanced student, nearing completion of his training, to produce paintings following his own ideas (like design, composition, colour, etc.) in the style of the master. It was certainly possible that if a student’s work was found to be extremely well-painted, the master would sign it with his own signature so that the painting would sell for a better price.
Obviously, in many cases it will not be easy to determine whether a painting was rightly attributed to the master. This was one of the reasons, in Rembrandt’s case, to start the Rembrandt Research Project. It ran from 1968–2014 and originally aimed to purify Rembrandt’s name from works that were not produced (fully) by him. Not all art historians are satisfied with the project’s methods and results, especially where in the last, sixth, volume dated 2014, conclusions from the first three volumes were revised, often without sufficient clarification. For more information on this, please refer to my book.
6 Signing with (a succession of) letters
An additional complication arises when the painter changes their signature.
Rembrandt himself, throughout his professional career, indeed changed his artistic signature reflecting his authorship. Van de Wetering explains that Rembrandt, when he was a young man, signed his work only with the monogram ‘RH’. This stands for Rembrandus Hermanni or Rembrant Harmenszoon (without a ‘d’ between the ‘n’ and the ‘t’ and ‘zoon’, meaning ‘son’ of Harmen). The ‘H’ does not stand for Holland.
Then, from 1626–1627, he signed with ‘RHL’, and in 1632 with ‘RHL van Rijn’. In these monograms, the ‘L’ most presumably stands for ‘Leydensis’, which is Latin for ‘from Leiden’, the town where he was born.
Rembrandt signed around 75 of his works with the RHL or RL monogram. The French art historian Bonafoux (Bonafoux (2019), 69) claims that Rembrandt must have had the intention to read his monogram in Latin. Rembrandt was a follower of Albrecht Dürer (Albertus Durerus Noricus) and Hans Holbein (Ioannes Holpenius Basileensis), says Bonafoux.
Dürer was a German painter, draftsman and maker of copper engravings, Holbein a German-Swiss painter and printmaker. Both were active at the beginning of the 16th century.
In 2019, Rembrandt’s biographer Onno Blom submits that the monogram was a tribute to his origin, to his father and his hometown, Blom (2019), 21. If so, the monogram expresses a ‘couleur locale’, a local colour.
Interestingly, in 2019 Jacqueline Coutré notes that none of his immediate colleagues adopted the ‘Leydensis’ moniker. Dr Jacquelyn Coutré is currently a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. She notes that Rembrandt’s use of this monogram coincides precisely with the period when his paintings, drawings, and prints were circulating beyond his native Leiden. Coutré is certain: it must have been Rembrandt’s intention to have his work spread beyond his city of origin. One could say, selling your artwork in Holland and beyond, by using a bit of a parochial signature.
On the other hand, there is the idea that if he uses this letter combination in Amsterdam, it expresses the fact that he does not want to break his ties with Leiden. Was he hedging his bets against uncertain prospects in Amsterdam, where fierce competition existed among painters?
7 Signing as Rembran(d)t
At the age of 26, Rembrandt began to sign his work with his first name only. In 1632, he signed with Rembrant (ending only with a ‘t’) and from early 1633 onwards until his death in 1669, he spelt his name Rembrandt (with ‘dt’) and signed his works in that way.
That’s quite a shift from a locally oriented letter combination to the full expression of your first name! One illustration of this are the paintings of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, bought jointly by the Netherlands and France in 2016. The painting of Marten is signed ‘Rembrandt.f. 1634’, the ‘f’ standing for ‘fecit’, which means ‘made’ (it), in Latin.
There must have been a reason for this change.
Van de Wetering agrees with the idea that Rembrandt began using his first name as his artistic signature as he considered himself to be the equal of the great Italian artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. Some of them were generally known only by their first names, such as Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Michelangelo. Using the single name ‘Rembrandt’ was unheard of in the Netherlands.
We can only guess where this young, ambitious entrepreneur from Leiden acquired knowledge about these Italian name indications. It seems most likely to me that he learned about this from his first teacher in Leiden, Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburgh, with whom he stayed for three years, from 1620–1623.
Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburgh (1571–1638) was the son of a painter and later burgomaster of Leiden, Isaac Claesz van Swanenburgh. Jacob was trained by his father and left for Italy when he was 20 years of age, so around 1591. There, in Naples, he married Margarita Cordona. After over 20 years, he returned to Leiden in 1615 to start his own studio, and his wife and children joined him in 1617. Van Swanenburgh must have told Rembrandt about the expressive designation of a single name.
Did Rembrandt consciously choose this new signature like a true entrepreneur?
Jacquelyn Coutré is absolutely certain of this. Early visitors to Rembrandt’s Leiden studio were for instance the Amsterdam regent Huydecoper and the Utrecht lawyer Aernout Buchell (1565–1641). They already used the name Rembrandt in their communications, e.g. Huydecoper referred to him as ‘Rembrandt’ and Huygens used ‘Rembrantio’ in his laudation written in Latin in 1630. Their visit confirms Rembrandt’s growing reputation. Rembrandt’s work is being collected by knowledgeable art lovers.
Rembrandt’s training of his second student, Isaac de Jouderville, also contributes to this, Coutré says. He charged 100 guilders a year. This was what Rembrandt charged his pupils during his period of greater fame in Amsterdam and what much more established artists, like Gerard van Honthorst (1592–1656), charged: ‘Clearly, Rembrandt’s star is on the rise in 1629.’ Indeed, in the earlier part of his Amsterdam period, he was a much desired and celebrated artist. His 18th century biographer Houbraken notes that ‘… his Art (‘Konst’) was so timely and sought-after that they (as the saying goes) had to pray and throw in extra money’ (‘… moest bidden en geld toegeven’).
Then Coutré becomes really exuberant. Around 1630, Rembrandt fully launches himself, ‘… unleashing his full potential as a confident, capable and innovative artist’. He carved out a name for himself as he grew as a newly independent master demonstrating his considered and ambitious approach to the market. The network of artists that flourished around him is a key piece of evidence in that assertion.
The network that Coutré is further developing in her work involves Jan Lievens, Gerard Dou, Jan van Vliet and Isaac de Jouderville. To me, however, this is not very convincing. Dou and Jouderville were Rembrandt’s students, Lievens was a Leiden competitor and Jan van Vliet (ca. 1605–1668) was a printmaker. Like Lievens, Van Vliet was not a pupil of Rembrandt, but an established professional associated with the master; he, in fact, made reproductive etchings after compositions by Rembrandt and Lievens.
8 Branding?
A conscious choice for a new signature is one thing. But is there a well-considered and well-thought-out plan behind it? Is Rembrandt working on his own branding? Is he signing with his surname with the curled R as a kind of logo, with the aim of increasing his fame? This has a different dimension than plain advertising, intended to encourage the public to take action. Branding is the well-thought-out construction of your brand or trade name, to increase its overall value.
The term ‘branding’ does not appear in the contribution of Coutré in the 2019 book ‘Leiden circa 1630. Rembrandt emerges’. In the same publication, Stephanie Dickey submits that the group portrait of the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons (the famous Anatomy lesson) is ‘a bold advertisement’ of Rembrandt’s skill and ambition (p. 24): ‘Rembrandt embraced the ideal of the universal master, proficient in all aspects of his craft.’
Professor Jochen Sander, curator at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is very clear on this. The title of an article published in 2019 is ‘Rembrandt as a Brand’ (p. 83). Rembrandt took the decisive step, soon after his arrival in Amsterdam ‘… to establish his brand by abandoning traditional forms of the signature he had used earlier’. By using his first name in 1632, Rembrandt became a trademark. He followed a custom that was already being used by his patrons and admirers, such as Huydecoper and Huygens.
By doing so, others submit, that ‘Rembrandt’ has become a brand name, a ‘Markenzeichen’, a ‘handelsmerk’, a ‘handelsnaam’: a tradename or a trademark. This view is expressed by several authors; leaving aside here, though, that in present Dutch legislation these terms have their own specific meaning.
Rembrandt’s choice for using the name ‘Rembrandt’ was made with the full awareness and intention of being able and wanting to be a successful artist. Was he so totally confident, independent and self-assured that he therefore wanted personal fame as well as high prices for his work?
I would like to remind you once again that others believe that with the signature RHL Rembrandt, for example, indicates that he kept on his studio in Leiden and that he did this in order to be able to work professionally in Leiden again in the event of disappointing developments in Amsterdam.
If he was so self-confident, why didn’t he choose to live in Leiden? Why, instead, did he choose to work in Amsterdam for Hendrick Uylenburgh? Uylenburgh was a merchant and an art dealer. Wasn’t the self-confident, independent, Rembrandt completely dependent on assignments from Uylenburgh’s network during his first three to four years in Amsterdam? Was Rembrandt not just employed by him? Who was this Uylenburgh anyway? …. I’ll save that for next time.
References
References referred to can be found under Sources.
- Josua Bruyn, A Descriptive Survey of the Signatures, in: A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, Volume I, 1982, 53ff.
- Jean-Marie Clarke’s Research, see https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/250318/250319, with his explanation via https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/250318/291244
- Jacquelyn N. Coutré (et al.), Leiden circa 1630. Rembrandt Emerges, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (ON; Canada), 2019.
- Michiel Franken and Jaap van der Veen. “The Signing of Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries” (2022). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–. https://theleidencollection.com/essays/the-signing-of-paintings-by-rembrandt-and-his-contemporaries/
- Jochen Sander, Rembrandt as a Brand, in: Stephanie S. Dickey and Jochen Sander, Rembrandt in Amsterdam. Creativity and Competition, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa/Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, distributed by Yale University Press, 2021-2022, 84ff.