Kuretsky \"Worldly Creation in Rembrandt Three Trees\" Artibus et Historiae 1994.pdf

Worldly Creation in Rembrandt's "Landscape with Three Trees"Author(s): Susan Donahue KuretskySource: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 15, No. 30 (1994), pp. 157-191Published by: IRSA s.c.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483479Accessed: 28-08-2016 02:45 UTC

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SUSAN DONAHUE KURETSKY

Worldly Creation in Rembrandt's Landscape with Three Trees*

The memorable tags attached to many of Rembrandt's works, such as The Night Watch and The Jewish Bride, have become as familiar as the images themselves. Yet popular titles often perpetuate misconceptions about subject and meaning. Rembrandt's largest and most celebrated landscape print (B. 212) [Fig. 1], the so-called "Three Trees" of 1643, is another significant case in point, for although the title is obviously not wrong, it seems an insufficient if not misleading designation for an image that includes so much more.' Not surprisingly, discussions of this print have often tended to miss the forest for the trees.

No Rembrandt landscape has elicited more numerous or more diverse reactions than this etching, first described as "de 3 boomtjes" in Valerius RO-ver's unpublished register, compiled around 1731, which is considered to be the earliest attempt at a comprehensive list of Rembrandt's prints.2 Gersaint's pioneering catalogue of the etchings, published twenty years later, referred to the print as "Paysage aux Trois Arbres," a slightly more inclusive title that will be retained in this discussion.3

The scene appears to have been inspired by the countryside around Amsterdam, which Rembrandt began exploring on foot after moving into his large townhouse on the Sint Anthonisbreestraat in 1639, and which he recorded frequently in prints and drawings between 1640 and 1652. Fritz Lugt, writing in 1915, was the first to identify the site specifically as Diemerdyck, between Amsterdam and the nearby village of Diemen, with Amsterdam at the left background, seen from the northeast.4 More recently, Colin Campbell, who believes the composition to be a mirror image of what the artist actually saw, has proposed that the view was taken from the west, along the road to Sloterdijk that runs over the crown of the Haarlemmerdijk.5 In fact, the absence of specific, identifiable landmarks, even along the generalized city profile at the left, suggests that, rather than representing a particular spot, Rembrandt has evoked the characteristic features of the Dutch

environment in a generic sense: the distinctive proximity of city and countryside, the flat expanses of tilled fields with their windmills, cattle and herdsmen, the changeable, cloud-filled sky, as well as the watery ground and the rising mass of a dike

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1) Rembrandt, ((Landscape with Three Trees)) (B. 212), 1643, etching, burin and drypoint, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, Gift of Mrs. Felix M. Warburg and her children (41.1.111)

that serves as platform for the three trees, themselves generic trees representing no particular species.6

Significantly, Rembrandt's other landscape prints, all much smaller in scale, have a more literal and informal effect. In

View of Amsterdam (B. 210) [Fig. 2] of ca. 1640, for example, the artist featured, on the city skyline at the left, such recog- nizable local motifs as the tower of the Oude Kerk, the

Montelbaanstoren and the warehouses of the Dutch East In-

dia Company, rendering them in a lively, cursive calligraphy that leaves large expanses of the page blank. In contrast, the pictorial intricacy of Landscape with Three Trees seems far more deliberate, even calculated in effect. The large plate (213 x 297 mm) has been densely worked throughout, in etching, burin and drypoint, with an intriguing variety of motifs that

WORLDLY CREATION IN THE REMBRANDT'S LANDSCAPE WITH THREE TREES

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2) Rembrandt, (View of Amsterdam)) (B. 210), ca. 1640, etching, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer (29.107.16)

the viewer discovers only gradually, upon prolonged and at- tentive examination. A striking anomaly among Rembrandt's landscape prints, Landscape with Three Trees raises ques- tions about the artist's intentions with respect to meaning as much as style, since its sheer complexity of appearance would seem to imply a correspondingly rich content. Moreover, the print encourages one to ask what confluence of circumstances

during the early 1640's might have brought such a singular image into being.

As recent scholarship on sixteenth and seventeenth century Netherlandish landscape has shown, artists wishing to convey universal ideas about the world, rather than the literal facts of a particular place and time, often did so by employing formal and thematic polarities.7 Rembrandt's thoughtfully ar-

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3) Rembrandt, ((Landscape with Three Trees)), detail, man and woman fishing

ticulated composition in Landscape with Three Trees is a major example of this practice, for the image is built up of powerful contrasts between the two sides of the scene. At the left

are towering, wind-blown clouds and dark diagonals of rain,8 while the sky at the right, bright and open, acts as a brilliant backdrop for the silhouette of the large trees. The low, flat

land at the left with its cultivated fields and calm horizontal

accents forms an open spatial vista that sweeps to the city in the distance, and even beyond to a thin edge of water at the horizon. At the right, in contrast, recession into depth is blocked by the great trees and by irregular masses of earth, overgrown with foliage and deeply shadowed by densely

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woven skeins of cross-hatched lines. Rembrandt even sets

up textural contrasts within the foreground between the shimmering surface of the pool at the left and the solid, deeply shadowed bulk of the dike at the right.

Recognizing Rembrandt's juxtapositions encourages the viewer to ponder multiple contrasts: between cultivated

vs. untamed nature, countryside vs. cityscape, sunny vs. stormy weather, as well as such fundamental physical and relational polarities as lightness and darkness, liquidity and solidity, motion and stasis, bigness and smallness, even nearness and farness, highness and lowness. Yet Rembrandt's dualities all belong to the realm of a distinc-

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6) Rembrandt, -Landscape with Three Trees)), detail, lovers in the bushes.

tively Dutch world, whose varied parts are all articulated with correspondingly diverse human beings. An old man and woman fish beside the quiet water at the left foreground [Fig. 3]; farmers and herdsmen with their animals stand or sit in the open fields beyond [Fig. 5]; the dense underbrush within the rising ground at the right conceals

a deeply shadowed pair of lovers [Fig. 6]. Behind the trees a wooden fence and small cottages merge with the side of the hill whose profile steers attention to additional human motifs: a man walking with a staff over his shoulder, a horse- drawn cart loaded with passengers and, finally, at the highest elevation in the scene, the tiny figure of a seated artist,

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9) Salomon van Ruysdael, ((View of Amersfoort)), 1634, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague (NK2546).

facing right and sketching a view outside the picture space [Fig. 7].

In formulating this expansive view of the local landscape as a contemporary panorama with people at leisure in nature and a distant cityscape, Rembrandt was continuing a tradi- tion established during the early years of the century by Dutch printmakers such as Jan van de Velde II, whose Wide Land- scape with a View of Haarlem, made around 1618 [Fig. 8], is also unusually large in scale (145 x 411 mm). It has often been

pointed out that the taste for such images was stimulated by the patriotic sentiments of a newly peaceful and independent nation-moreover, one whose land was literally being re- claimed from the sea.9 Rembrandt's etching surely had these associations as well. Throughout the century such civilized images of the local scene continued to express Dutch peace and prosperity, as in Salomon van Ruysdael's View of Amersfoort dated 1634 (Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague) [Fig. 9]. A close prototype for Rembrandt's print,

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Ruysdael's painting offers a similar arrangement (in reverse) of a panorama with city view framed by trees that loom high above the figures. In Landscape with Three Trees, however, standard landscape motifs take on a startlingly new manifestation, for the grouping of trees appears gigantic in comparison to the scale of the nearby figures and is further elevated above the hori-

zon by the rise of the dike. Dramatically isolated against the bright sky, they overlap and merge at the top, becoming, in a sense, one tree with three trunks [Fig. 10]. In their emblematic isolation Rembrandt's trees virtually beg for interpretive commentary, especially because the motif itself is so richly evocative in symbolic associations, both religious and secu- lar. The one form in nature that joins earth and sky, trees

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11) Rembrandt, uSt. Francis in Prayer)), 1657 (B. 107/ii), drypoint with etching and engraving, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 51.703.

have been commonly understood as symbols of rebirth and regeneration because of their yearly renewal of foliage and because of their capacity to sprout again when pruned or cut down: "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch will not cease" (Job 14:7).10 Rembrandt was well aware that trees can also allude specifically to Christian redemption, for he made as-

sociations between the wood of the tree and the cross in a

number of works, most notably a magnificent later drypoint of St. Francis in Prayer (B. 107) [Fig. 11] completed in 1657, which shows the devout old hermit kneeling before an ancient sprouting tree, behind which is a large crucifix.11 Chris- topher Brown has even suggested thatLandscape with Three Trees is an intentional recollection of the three crosses on

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Calvary, specifically the period during the Crucifixion when "from the sixth hour there was a darkness over all the land

until the ninth hour" (Matthew 27:45), and that the figures in this landscape exist in a world dominated by a reminder of Christ's sacrifice.12 A further theological association that in- evitably comes to mind is the three-part oneness of God, as described in Christ's words to the disciples: "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." (Matthew 28:19).

In the metaphorical intellectual climate of seventeenth- century Holland, such veiled meanings were commonplace, even expected. Indeed, there is evidence that the Calvinist ban against literal artistic represention of God's spiritual es- sence encouraged Dutch artists to seek symbolic equivalents for the concept of the Trinity.13 Rather than simply explain- ing this scene as a religious subject masquerading as a landscape, however, the eye-catching motif of the three trees seems rather to act as a provocative stimulus for contemplation, inviting the viewer to think about the multiple associa-

tions generated by familiar local scenery. Reconsidering the relationship of the trees to the composition as a whole suggests, as we will see, that Rembrandt's print expresses the artist's reflections about the nature of creation on several lev-

els, only one of which was theological.

That seventeenth-century artists and viewers understood nature as the manifestation of God's creation was clearly articulated, among many others, by Franciscus Junius, the Dutch art theorist whose popular treatise on the painting of the ancients (De pictura veterum, Amsterdam, 1637), was reissued in English in 1638 and, again, in a Dutch edition of 1641: "...what is nature else, saith Seneca, but God and a divine power infused into the whole world and every part of the world..."14 In Rembrandt's etching this connection is underlined with unusual deliberation both by the uncommon scope and diversity of the scene and by the powerful rise of the huge trees, rooted in the ground with their foliage against the light so that they overlap and connect earth and sky [Fig. 10]. Equally significant in this double-sided composition is the fact that the great crown of foliage on the right is visually reiterated in the similarly configured cloud masses on the left [Fig. 13]. Thus, the observer is encouraged to reflect upon the relationship between trees and sky. In fact, the unusual emphasis on the heavens and on specific weather conditions in this scene is as striking as the trees, both pictorially and iconographically.

Rembrandt had represented stormy weather in a number of his painted landscapes of the late 1630's, such as Land- scape with a Stormy Sky of ca. 1637-38 in Braunschweig [Fig. 12]. As Cynthia Schneider has pointed out, Landscape with Three Trees is in many respects an adaptation to printmaking of the language Rembrandt had recently established for his painted representations of nature.15 Yet while the painting also includes unobtrusive country folk and farm animals, its massive mountain formations and exotic archi- tectural motifs define the vista as an imaginary place, whose lowering clouds give the scene a brooding, theatrical effect.16 With all its symbolic associations, Landscape with Three Trees remains a direct evocation of the artist's contemporary environment-a world whose level topography puts unusual emphasis on the sky.

Massing clouds and intermittent showers are probably the most distinctive climatological feature of The Netherlands, so it is not surprising that Dutch landscapists paid unprecedented

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attention to the sky, even though, as John Walsh has demon- strated, they tended to distort and improvise cloud forms in the service of compositional animation and unity.17 Repre- sentations of actual falling rain appear infrequently in Dutch art, with the exception of marine tempests and depictions of the Seasons, the Months or the Elements in allegorical print series.18 Thus, Rembrandt's powerful delineation of clouds and rain, streaming down in windblown sheets at the left (background as well as foreground) [Fig. 13], must have impressed his viewers both as a compelling demonstration of their national weather, and as a revelation of the powers of the Cre- ator embodied in the natural world.19 In Landscape with Three Trees Rembrandt animates the atmosphere itself with wind, indicating eddies of air by shifts in the directions and patterns

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of lines, even far above where a distant flock of birds rides the upper air currents [Fig. 14]. Dutch artists were, in fact, the first to study the full complex-

ity of wind for its own sake, not surprising in a land whose "hy- drographic structure," as Huizinga termed it, so depended upon the action of wind and windmills.20 In Rembrandt's etching the

predominant wind direction-from right to left-has been care- fully established by repeated visual indicators throughout the scene. First, the foliage of the three trees [Fig. 10], blowing toward the left, displays a large ragged gap at the far right where the leaves take the brunt of the prevailing wind. The windmill just at the horizon in the center faces right, into the wind, while

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15) Gabriel Rollenhagen, "Post Tentationem Consolatio," Nucleus Emblematum selectissimorum, Arnhem, 1611-13, no. 58. Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague.

the bird above it glides on the breeze toward the left with wings extended. Most obviously, the diagonals of rain in foreground and background [Fig. 13] move from right to left.21

Art historians, nonetheless, have frequently described Landscape with Three Trees as if the wind were coming from the left, with an approaching downpour about to inundate the landscape and its inhabitants.22 In consequence, interpretations of the scene have often mistakenly implied that the protago- nists are confronting a menacing or adversarial mood of nature. Instead, this landscape represents a roughly equal bal- ance between sunny and clouded sky. The passing rain squall, hardly cataclysmic in duration or intensity, should rather be un-

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derstood as a typical manifestation of the variable Dutch weather whose alternation of sun and rain nourishes this fertile, highly habitable land. The necessity for both is the premise for Gabriel Rollenhagen's emblem of 1611-13, "Post Tentationem Con- solatio" ("After Trial, Alleviation") [Fig. 15], which points out how flowers seared by the sun's heat are refreshed and revived by the rain.23 An emblem by Joachim Camerarius "Coeli Benedictio Ditat" ("Enriched by Heaven's Blessing") [Fig. 16] of 1654 even parallels the life-giving properties of rain to God's blessing of humanity with the "rain" of the Holy Spirit.24 In this connection, it seems significant that viewers have commonly noted traces of heads or angels' wings in the cloud shapes at the left,

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possibly remnants of an earlier use of the etching plate.25 Such almost subliminal supernatural forms further suggest that the artist meant his local landscape to be seen as a kind of earthly paradise demonstrating the Creator's work.

In any case, one immediately understands that this is a view of nature bearing special significance, for the sheet of rain at the left literally unveils the scene like a pulled curtain for the observer's contemplation, revealing it in a physical sense, but also signalling that meanings or ideas exist beyond the surface of what is visible.26 A drama without narrative, Landscape with Three Trees is presented with all the gravity and concentration of the artist's most ambitious religious themes, such as The AngelAppearing to the Shepherds (B. 44) [Fig. 17] dated 1634, in which turbulent celestial weather sparks the confrontation between earthly and heavenly realms.27 In Landscape with Three Trees Rembrandt has reversed the relationship of figures and setting normally found in narrative subjects so that background, so to speak, becomes foreground. Here nature as the dominant protagonist is represented as a powerfully animated presence, with diverse human beings embedded in it as quiet counterpoints. This reversal, however, does not in any sense imply people's insignificance within nature. As noted earlier, this landscape with its cultivated fields and large dike is also presented very much as an achievement of human inge- nuity and effort-man's creation as well as God's.

Patriotic appreciation of such views of the Dutch countryside was based precisely upon pride in the landscape as a national self-creation, topographically as well as politically. It is therefore not surprising that distinctive aspects of Rembrandt's scene that evoke its Dutchness are given special emphasis here, even exaggerated, such as the constant alternation of sun and rain or the powerful contrast between the low-lying terrain at the left and the large dike at the right whose presence signifies retrieval of the land and protection against inundation. As Werbke has noted, the turbulent sky that appears just above this fertile plain brings to mind, along with its other associations, the Old Testament column of cloud that led Moses to the Promised Land (Exodus 14:21).28 Such an allusion would not have seemed farfetched to Rembrandt's viewers, for the Dutch identified themselves closely with the children of Israel in their recent struggle for a homeland free of religious oppression.29

Moreover, celebration of the fertility and beneficence of their own countryside as a creation of its inhabitants was a concept that had become well established in visual form in a popular national symbol of the United Provinces: theHollandse Tuin (Garden of Holland), consisting of a personification of

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18) Willem Buytewech, ((Allegory of the Deceitfulness of Spain and the Liberty and Prosperity of the Seven Provinces)), ca. 1615, etching, Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam.

Holland enclosed within a woven garden fence. Willem Buytewech's 1615 etching, Allegory of the Deceitfulness of Spain and the Freedom and Prosperity of the Seven Provinces [Fig. 18] shows Hollandia enthroned under the shields of the Seven Provinces of The Netherlands in an orderly garden tended by personifications of Might (macht) and Reason (reden).30 In a less obviously emblematic way, Rembrandt's Landscape with Three Trees can also be related to the idea of the well-tilled

national garden. Significantly, however, his vista is not fenced- in and enclosed. Its sweeping recession gives an effect of mag- nitude beyond the actual scale of a land whose dimensions are modest-a means of glorifying the local landscape, while expressing national pride in a broader sense. Furthermore, the powerful contrast in size between the three trees and the tiny rooftops on the distant skyline at the left has the effect of making the countryside between appear expansive, open and available to its inhabitants.31Shaped and ordered by human effort, this terrain provides a bountiful homeland for its inhabitants, as Rembrandt clearly demonstrates by populating the scene with people farming, tending cattle and fishing. Yet the labor- ers all appear relaxed and at leisure, recalling Boon's apt description of Landscape with Three Trees as "ein Hollindisches Arcadien."32

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Two pairs of foreground figures, considerably larger in scale than the others, act as significant counterparts in the scene, for they function in effect as personifications of the two material elements that constitute the Dutch landscape: water and earth (with the immaterial elements of air and fire evoked above by wind and sun). At the left [Fig. 3], beside the water and beneath the sheet of falling rain, an old fisherman stands quietly with his rod; an elderly woman, probably his wife, sits beside him on the bank with a basket to hold the catch. Fishing, the most inactive of all human endeavors because it requires immobility in order to be successful, had long associations with idleness, with the element of water and with the phlegmatic temperament, characteristic of old age.33 This constellation of meanings is illustrated, for example, in

Jacques de Gheyn II's Phlegmaticus engraving of ca. 1596 [Fig. 4], which represents an old fisherman emptying his basket in the rain.34

In The Netherlands, extensive inland waterways encouraged line fishing both as a practical source for food and as a pleasantly reflective pastime that put one in touch with the beauties of nature. Indeed, recognition of fishing's special ad- vantages as a sport had become well established long before Rembrandt's time in the famous Treatise of Fishing with an Angle, first printed in 1496, which reminded the angler that even "yf there be nought in the water..., atte the leest he hath his holsom walke."35

Correspondingly, appreciation of activities that brought people into relaxed contact with the outdoors was enthusias-

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20) Rembrandt, (Landscape with Three Trees)), counterproof, Harvey D. Parker Collection, Courtesy, Mu- seum of Fine Arts, Boston.

tically expressed in seventeenth-century Dutch hofdichten or countryhouse poems which praised the salutary benefits of living on rural estates in close contact with nature or the ad- vantages for city-dwellers of excursions into the countryside. In Petrus Hondius's colossal hofdicht (more than 16,000 verses), published in 1621, the author praises the peace and safety of rural existence (buyten-leven) as an antidote to the confusion and corruption of cities, and as a realm where the wonderous works ("Vruchten, vogels, beesten, vis....") of a beneficent God have been provided for human enjoyment.36 Rembrandt's landscape offers an analogous experience to the viewer, especially in the expressive juxtaposition of the peaceful pair fishing at the left foreground with the city skyline far behind them, representing the distant hubbub of urban life.

A more literal interpretation of the pleasures to be found in the outdoors is expressed by the pair of young lovers at the right [Fig. 6], framed by foliage and so deeply veiled in shadow that they become visible only after the most prolonged and intense scrutiny of the print. One is reminded of Otto Vaenius's emblem of Cupid embracing a woman within a dark, deeply shadowed grotto [Fig. 19]. The accompanying commentary entitled, "Love lyketh darkness," explains that just as stolen bread has more savor, Cupid prefers secrecy and shadow.37

Interestingly, a rare, previously unpublished counterproof of Rembrandt's print [Fig. 20] reveals the hazy shape of a goat to the left of the couple, even more deeply obscured by the densely cross-hatched underbrush and shadow.38 Rembrandt

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had used the same motif, which traditionally symbolizes lust, in a far more obvious way in his erotic pastoral etching of 1642, The Flute Player (B. 188) [Fig. 21], in which a goatherd ignores his unruly flock of rams to peer lustfully under the skirt of a shepherdess weaving her virginal garland.39 In Land- scape with Three Trees, "dame venus theft" is accomplished

by the young woman who reaches with unabashed eagerness between her lover's legs and the action of the couple, although sexually explicit, seems neither bawdy nor moralizing in a negative sense. Identification of this sanguine pair with nature's fertility and generativity is unmistakable, as illustrated similarly in an engraving of ca. 1597 by Jan Saenredam after

Goltzius representing Spring [Fig. 22], which may have served as Rembrandt's source. In the earlier print, amorous couples disport themselves in an elegant garden with large trees and luxuriant foliage at the left, within which a pair of embracing lovers is hidden.40

Rembrandt's landscape, then, represents nature not only as an achievement of human creation in a physical or territorial sense (the Garden of Holland), but in a more complex way, as the creation of a contemporary Arcadia which offers freedom, peace and pleasure to its inhabitants, for in Landscape with Three Trees, nature accommodates or inspires human enjoy- ments that in other contexts might well be considered vices (idleness and lust). Although Dutch pastoral imagery was popular during the 1640's, the distinctively contemporary effect of this etching (there are no shepherdesses in theatrical garb) as well as its unusually large size, elaborate finish and complex imagery suggests a more pointed intention on Rembrandt's part. The scene seems, in fact, deliberately calculated to catch public attention and, having done so, to provoke uncommonly intense and thoughtful scrutiny. Why this particular interpretation of this particular subject might have had special appeal for a Dutch viewer in 1643 seems a question worth asking.

During the period leading up to the 1648 Treaty of MOnster, which established final and official recognition of Dutch independence, the war with the Spanish continued on land and sea under the leadership of the Dutch Stadholder, Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. Important triumphs of the late 1630's included the retaking of Breda in 1637 and Admiral Tromp's decisive defeat of the "Second Armada" at the Battle of the Downs in

1639. The early '40's, however, was a time of increasing uncertainty and internal dissension between Frederick Henry, who favored strong support for military spending, and the States General, led by the Province of Holland, which advocated a more frugal defensive policy and the protection of trade.41 Frederick Henry's prestige was, however, significantly enhanced by the most important event of the decade: the marriage, on 12 May 1641, of his son and heir, Willem II, to Mary Stuart, daughter of King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria (daughter of Marie de Medici and sister of Louis XIII of France). The union, initiated by Marie de Medici during her visit to Hol- land in 1638, served the interests of both sets of parents: the dynastic ambitions of the Dutch and, for the English, expecta- tions of Dutch assistance in the threatening English civil war, which finally broke out in 1642. Although Frederick Henry urged negotiation and reconciliation, he was ultimately drawn into the conflict. In 1642, Henrietta Maria came to Holland, seeking, over the protests of Parliament, to raise money for the royalist cause on the security of the English crown jewels and to con- vince Frederick Henry to abandon Dutch neutrality. Despite a

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ban, issued by the States General in November of 1642, on export of war materials across the Channel, the English loan was arranged in Amsterdam (Frederick Henry pledging his own credit); both troops and military supplies accompanied the English queen when she sailed home in January of 1643.42 At the same time, peace negotiations with Spain continued, shifting to MOnster in 1643, even as the French encouraged the Dutch to continue fighting.

This complex prelude to final Dutch independence was clearly a time of intense concern about national well-being and

23) Rembrandt, (The Concord of the State)), oil on panel, 164(?), Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, no. 1717.

hopes for an end to the long and costly struggle for peace. Rembrandt could hardly have been unaware of the international happenings-in-progress, for a number of the leading participants had recently visited Amsterdam. On 20 May 1642, a triumphal entry into the city had been celebrated for Queen Henrietta Maria, the young Willem II, his bride Mary Stuart and Frederick Henry himself-his first and last ceremonial visit to Amsterdam. Indeed, Rembrandt's direct artistic involvement in the patriotic issues and aspirations of this period is documented in the ambiguous

allegorical painting known as The Concord of the State [Fig. 23], signed and illegibly dated 164(?).43 This large grisaille (Boymans- van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam) may even have been the preparatory study for a broadsheet or allegorical tableau intended for the triumphal entry of 1642."

The complex symbolic imagery packed into this composition, which has elicited extensive art historical commentary, need not be fully enumerated here, but two aspects of this scene, which is clearly a political allegory, bear comparison to

Landscape with Three Trees: the expansive landscape with a stormy sky, and the central motif of large windblown trees, elevated on a rise of land. In The Concord of the State, battling soldiers and armored horsemen crowd into a devastated ter-

rain, trampled and worn to bare ground by their presence. Vari- ous emblematic motifs may be interpreted as allusions to disunity within the Dutch Republic that endangers the concord needed for victory. The lion (symbol of The Netherlands) is chained and has a loosened bundle of arrows under its paw, one separated from the others, while behind the lion are city coats of arms dominated by the large shield of Amsterdam- perhaps an allusion to the conflict between Frederick Henry with his expensive military campaigns and the cities of Hol- land, led by Amsterdam, that were eager for peace and prosperity.45 A blindfolded figure of Justice behind an empty throne at the left has been interpreted as a reference to the Dutch provinces' just rejection of rule by the Spanish king.4 Alternatively, the throne has been seen as an allusion to Prince Frederick

Henry's hopes (not to be fulfilled until the early nineteenth century) for an hereditary Dutch monarchy, for the central motif of an old tree with young shoots recalls the motto of his prede- cessor, Prince Maurits of Orange: "Tandem fit surculus arbor" ("Eventually the young shoot becomes a tree").47

Within the context of the scene as a whole, however, this motif suggests a more comprehensive political meaning, for the large oak stump with its leafy sprouts overlaps a palm and both trees rise against a dark and threatening sky. The oak, whose solidity and endurance have traditionally symbolized fortitude, here conveys the capacity for regeneration, even after weathering and age, while palm fronds (emblems of victory in ancient Rome) retained similar meaning in the Christian era as allusions to triumph over death through Christian martyr- dom. The merging of this double arboreal motif, rising above the scene, suggests that victory-either in war or over internal dissension-can be won only through unity and steadfastness.48

When viewed against this contemporary background, Rembrandt's Landscape with Three Trees can be interpreted as an expression of the same concerns revealed in The Con- cord of the State, which is its expressive opposite, for both can be seen as intensely patriotic images. Rather than discord and destruction, however, the etching represents an ideal state of Dutch peace and prosperity that permits full use and enjoyment of the national garden. The wind-tossed trees in both scenes can also be related to a common emblematic conceit:

that deeply rooted trees, like virtuous, well-rooted people, stand firm in storms and that adversity builds strength-an idea con- veyed in Gabriel Rollenhagen's emblem of 1611-13, "Per Angusta ad Augusta" of 1611-13 [Fig. 24].49 Rising tall above the Dutch plain, the three trees must likewise have reminded

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Rembrandt's contemporaries-especially during this period of anxious national transition-of the motto of the Republic of the United Netherlands: Concordia Res Parvae Crescunt (Unity Makes Small Things Grow).50

Even as Rembrandt represented the Dutch landscape as a manifestation of divine and human labor, his interpretation of nature in Landscape with Three Trees suggests that he was thinking no less deeply about the role of the artist as worldly

creator. Indeed, this is a work that discloses much about the artist's attitudes toward nature and toward the processes of imaging it. Keeping in mind that any work of art almost inevita- bly alludes to such matters, one nonetheless discovers in Land- scape with Three Trees that Rembrandt has directed unusual attention to his own role as its maker, both in his choice of motifs and in his way of handling the medium. His active par- ticipation-his artistic presence-in the scene is immediately evoked, not only in the motif of the small draughtsman at work on the hill at the right [Fig. 7], but also in the etching's unusual degree of elaboration and finish, yet its oddly spontaneous, even experimental effect.

Rembrandt's flexible, open-ended approach to printmaking led him to engage in frequent, often extensive self-revision. Large-scale virtuoso pieces, analogous to the print under discussion, might evolve through five or more changes in state before the artist was content to let the work stand.51 It there-

fore seems surprising thatLandscape with Three Trees is known in only a single state. Contrasts in handling of line and tone within the print itself, however, tell us much about the artist's working process, as if Rembrandt had intentionally encapsu- lated within the image stages of artistic activity normally ob- servable only in multiple states.

This conflation of graphic gestures is most obvious at the left side of the scene [Fig. 13] where traces of earlier imagery on the plate seem to emerge from under the etched cloud forms, themselves overlapped in turn by the long drypoint lines of rain, scored directly into the plate. Equally striking is the manner in which loose webs of lines used to suggest clouds and wind in the upper part of the scene [Fig. 14] contrast with the densely overlaid layers of hatchings at ground level where forms both emerge from and sink into varying levels of obscurity [Fig. 6]. As Werbke has pointed out, even illegible or unclear areas in the scene, such as the hidden lovers, take on a positive function, for they express the concept Jacob Cats termed "agreeable obscurity," encouraging the viewer to look more closely to decipher (and therefore to un- derstand more fully) what is not apparent at first glance.52 The technical virtuosity of Landscape with Three Trees, immediately apparent in its diversity of lines and tones, is therefore employed as a means of displaying varied aspects of the physical world while demonstrating that different kinds of looking can be required to perceive them.

The 1640's was, in fact, a decade in which Rembrandt frequently drew attention to his own creative process as a printmaker, with technique itself often contributing directly to meaning. Stephanie Dickey has drawn attention to a number of etchings of this period in which graphic contrast (finish vs. sketchiness), emphasized by a compositionally divided format,

was used to convey an interplay between observed reality and related metaphorical idea, as in an emblem.53

Accordingly, the contrast in clarity of detail between the three trees and the analogously configured but hazily rendered cloud masses at the left emphasizes the idea of nature as God's creation, as discussed earlier. In using graphic contrast to simultaneously draw attention to his manner of rendering these motifs, Rembrandt enhanced their meaning as well, making us aware that the scene also involves, so to speak, the creation of Creation as an artistic endeavor.54

Interestingly enough, the Dutch theoretical literature of this period provides parallel evidence that landscape was considered a particular challenge to an artist's creative capacities with respect to both technical mastery and imagination. At the beginning of the century, Carel van Mander, who noted in his landscape chapter in Het Schilderboek that trees "...em- bellish our work if they are painted well, but ruin it if they are not," (verse 36), went on to discuss how particularly difficult it is, even with practice, to render the "flowing movement" of leaves (verse 37). According to Van Mander, copying the visible world is not simply a skill like activities that use the muscles of the body. Leaves, Van Mander stated, are difficult to learn about and render because they are "spiritual things," along with air, hair and fabrics (verse 37), and therefore can be conceived and reproduced only through exercise of the imagination. While there is no proof that Rembrandt was directly inspired by this well-known treatise, his landscape clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of Van Mander's advice to

avoid monotony in the depiction of foliage by including "...thin twigs, either pointing upwards or bending downwards hap- hazardly..." (verse 40), as well as his admonitions to "...group the trees effectively..." and to "...place small figures next to large trees..." (verse 43).55 Rembrandt's trees [Fig. 10] are memorable not merely because their artful grouping is so iconographically resonant, but also because they illustrate such subtle and complex perceptions about nature. Their unified grouping emphasizes their solidity as stable forms in space, while their "flowing" crowns convey a vivid illusion of shimmering foliage, responsive to light and air.

Later in the century, similar observations about the difficul- ties of understanding and correctly rendering clouds and sky were formulated by Samuel van Hoogstraten, who had been a student in Rembrandt's workshop during the early 1640's, the period in which Landscape with Three Trees was executed. Hoogstraten's Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilder- konst, an artists' handbook published in 1678, discusses the importance of the interplay between clouds and sky, which, the author states, can be properly judged only by the accurate vision of an artist. Common people, Hoogstraten says, think

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they can read omens in the clouds and images conjured by chance and so are easily deceived by illusions." Although Hoogstraten's treatise was published long after the etching was made, Rembrandt's striking treatment of the heavens implies that he was well aware of the notion of the sky as a kind of celestial canvas in which forms and shapes appear-forms, as in a painting or print, which may belong to nature but which also have the potential for illusionistic deception. Why else, in a print made with this degree of artistic care and refinement, would the artist have permitted the curious ambiguity between the clouds and the marginally legible shapes within or beneath them? Indeed, his melding of cloud forms with fragments of representational shapes suggests, again, a paralleling of divine and human capacities for worldly creation, a concept deriving from the Renaissance notion that the artist's creative faculties

reflect those of the Maker.57 In any case, Dutch theorists' appreciation of clouds as tests of artistic knowledge and virtuosity can be documented well into the eighteenth century, for Gerard de Lairesse, whose treatise on painting (Het Groot

Schilderboek) was published in Amsterdam in 1707, noted specifically that "Een schoone lucht is een proefstuk van een deftig

Meester." (A beautiful sky is a test piece for a true master).5 When Rembrandt placed the tiny figure of a seated

draughtsman at the far right [Fig. 7], on the highest elevation and against the brightest light in the scene, he added a more literal tribute to the artistic process, as inspired specifically by landscape. The motif of an artist sketching from nature, which began to be used with some frequency in sixteenth century topographical landscapes, seems to have been developed both as a device to emphasize the sweeping scale of a vista and as a means of certifying that the locality represents an actual place, studied after nature.59 Accordingly, such witness figures are almost invariably represented in the process of recording the view depicted in the image itself, as does the seated draughtsman tucked into the right foreground of Rembrandt's etching of Cottages and Farm Buildings of ca. 1642-43 (B. 239) [Fig. 25].6o In Landscape with Three Trees, however, this figure has his back to what the observer sees.

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In gazing beyond the picture space to a vista only he can see, the draughtsman accentuates the boundless scope of nature, while implying that an artist's ability to comprehend and de- pict it extends beyond its immediate appearances. Indeed, as noted earlier, one is repeatedly reminded that this image is to be understood as an artistic invention or idea, rather than as

the representation of a particular site. If not a literal self-portrait, the draughtsman seems very much a self-reference, un- derscoring the extent to which Rembrandt found contact with the world of nature an integral aspect of his own creative process, particularly during the decade of the 1640's.61

Significantly, two of Rembrandt's etched self-portraits of this period make the same point, although in rather different ways. A curious little sheet of studies, dating from around 1642 (B. 372) [Fig. 26], shows only the upper part of the artist's head with one eye (a second eye is lightly sketched in vertically above

the head) and the soft velvet beret that appears so often in Rembrandt's self portraits as an attribute of the learned painter because of its double associations with academic regalia and Renaissance artists' working attire.62 Above the beret is a tree with a figure standing beside it, seen horizontally when one views the artist's face, so that the shape of the tree roughly parallels the broad shape of the beret. Strands of hair, sketched at the right beneath the foliage, recall Van Mander's observation, noted above, that leaves, like air, hair and fabrics, require exercise of the artist's imagination (geest). Here, in fact, the juxtaposition of Rembrandt's penetrating gaze with the motifs of beret and tree makes this apparently random series of sketches into a strikingly coherent statement about the complex relationship between direct examination of nature and artistic imagination.

Several years later, in his 1648 etched Self-portrait at a Window (B. 22) [Fig. 27], Rembrandt represented himself in plain studio dress, gazing intensely out at the observer and drawing (probably on an etching plate) by the light of an open window. The fourth state of the print, somewhat reworked, includes an apparently autograph landscape beyond the open window, again deliberately paralleling nature with the process of creative work, a point underlined by the manner in which landscape and window are conflated and juxtaposed to the artist's working hand. The illumination this window provides is clearly more than a matter of simple daylight.

During the 1640's Rembrandt produced fewer self-portraits than at any other period in his career, abandoning the theme altogether between 1640 and 1645. Yet, as Perry Chapman has suggested, landscapes and representations of studio practice seem to have developed as alternative forms of self-reflection during these years.63 An interpretation of nature that both demonstrates and embodies notions of artistic creation,Landscape with Three Trees, may also reflect Rembrandt's personal concerns and ambitions, even beyond its broader allusions to artistic invention and virtuosity, because it was made during a profoundly transitional period in his career.

Early art historians tended to attribute Rembrandt's new involvement with his local landscape at the beginning of the 1640's to the artist's grief over the progressive decline and untimely death of his wife Saskia in 1642, which supposedly sent him out of the house seeking distraction and solace in the outdoors. As Emile Michel speculated in 1894, "...he had been greatly shaken by Saskia's death. It seems probable that the poor recluse felt that yearning for rest and refreshment which

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draws so many stricken souls to the fields and woods."" Al- though such literal biographical reasoning sounds quaintly in- adequate to modern scholars, there is no question that the early 1640's was a significant turning point in the artist's life, both personally and professionally, or as Gary Schwartz put it: "In the year of Saskia's death, something drastic went wrong with Rembrandt's career...."65 Whether Rembrandt's turning to new subjects should be

attributed to a falling off of commissions, to personal prefer- ence, or to both can only be conjectured. Nonetheless, the pro-

duction of such a uniquely large and elaborate landscape print suggests that he may have been seeking, at this juncture in his career, new means of enhancing his artistic reputation. Made in a medium that permits reproductive dissemination, this evocation of a distinctively Dutch world melds artistic and patriotic pride, generating complex levels of association and allusion that seem to address themselves both to a local Dutch public, and to a larger audience beyond it. In recognizing the uncommon appearance of Rembrandt's

print, a number of scholars have noted its general resemblance

to Rubens, an artist who also associated his creative powers with the natural world, especially in the landscapes he painted toward the end of his life of the countryside around his rural

estate, the Chateau de Steen.66 Rubens's late landscapes, in which nature is also seen as an expansive, fertile world, are like Rembrandt's print in their dynamic juxtaposition of trees with a long spatial vista that often includes a distant cityscape and an animated, cloud-filled sky. A number of Rubens's composi- tions, such as The Return from the Fields, now in the Galleria Pitti in Florence, of ca. 1630-35, were widely circulated through the engravings of Schelte a Bolswert and others [Fig. 28], which were very likely known to Rembrandt, since the inventory of his possessions made in 1656 mentions an album of prints after Rubens (subject unspecified).67

Rubens's death on 30 May 1640, at the height of his international fame, occurred several years before Rembrandt completed this major landscape print, but the public auction of his picture collection, widely advertised by poster in Holland as well as Flanders, took place on 17 March 1642, continuing through June of the same year, and on 3 November 1643 Rubens's body was moved to its final resting place in the new Antwerp mortuary chapel whose construction he had re- quested.68 Even without such immediately contemporane- ous reminders, however, Rembrandt's formulation of Land- scape with Three Trees suggests that he may have conceived of his print partly as a reminiscence of and response to Rubens's towering achievement and reputation.69 In so do- ing, he could demonstrate, to himself and to the public at large, that a Dutch artist, representing his own countryside, could rival the virtuosity of the great Flemish master whose achieve- ments had commanded the international art world of the pre- vious generation.

Accordingly, the Dutchness of Landscape with Three Trees, noted earlier, becomes all the more apparent when it is compared to Rubens's more timeless, idealized view of nature with its voluptuous peasant girls, undulating furrows of earth and lavish harvest. Rembrandt replaces the all-encom- passing unity of Rubens's interpretation with a new emphasis on diversity and specificity, stressing physical contrasts and using shifting weather conditions to evoke a vividly temporal effect. That the scene has an uncanny familiarity may be attributed to the artist's invention of a landscape that appears to be simultaneously somewhere and anywhere, animated with natural phenomena that he has pictured in the very process of happening.

In the absence of an artist's direct account of his own inten-

tions (and often even then), one can only speculate about the factors that bring a major work of art into being, shaping its appearance and meaning. The image itself offers its own best evidence, but when it stands as a conspicuous departure from the artist's usual manner of working, one also looks for special circumstances to suggest why he extended himself in new directions. As we have seen, a number of such factors came into play during the early 1640's, from happenings on the national scene to changes in Rembrandt's personal and professional situation. That he formulated such a thoughtful and complex representation of the world around him at precisely this time does not there-

fore seem surprising. In Landscape with Three Trees Rembrandt found new ways of expressing what the process of creation meant to him, as an artist and as a man of his time.

* Earlier drafts of this paper have been given as lectures at Dartmouth College and at Hofstra University in 1988, and at Smith Col- lege in 1992. I am greatly indebted to Pamela Askew, Cynthia Schneider and to Arthur Wheelock for their helpful comments on this manuscript. To Beatrijs Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij (1942-93), sharer of intellectual excursions within and beyond the Dutch countryside, this paper is grate- fully and affectionately dedicated.

1 The question of how titles of works of art can condition a viewer's ability to see them clearly has been noted specifically about "The Three Trees" by C. Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1981, p. 199.

2 This handwritten inventory, made by a Delft collector, is preserved in the Universiteits-Bibliotheek, Amsterdam (no. H.S. II A. 17, no. 6). The reference to "The Three Trees" is on p. 60. See J. G. van Gelder and N. F van Gelder Schrijver, "De 'Memorie' van Rembrandts prenten in het bezit van Valerius Roever," Oud Holland LV (1938), pp. 1-16.

3 Gersaint implied that the title was already well established at the time of his writing: "Un tres-beau Paysage, connus sous le nom du Paysage aux trois Arbres...," Catalogue Raisonne'de toutes Les Pi6ces qui forment i'Oeuvre de Rembrandt, Paris, 1751, p. 67.

4 E Lugt, Wandelingen met Rembrandt in en om Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1915, p. 147.

5 C. Campbell, "Rembrandt's Etsen Het Sterfbed van Maria en De drie Bomen," De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis XXXII (1980), pp. 16-17.

6 Having consulted a dendrologist, Campbell established that Rembrandt's trees, whose foliage is similar to willow leaves and whose bark recalls mountain ash, belong to no definable species. (Campbell, "Rembrandt's Etsen," p. 32, note 19). Two recent discussions of the print conclude that the setting, although reminiscent of the vicinity of Amsterdam, is not a definable place. See A. Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradrieung mit drei Baumen' als Visuell-Gedankliche Herausforderung," Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen XXI (1989), p. 227 and C. Schneider, Rembrandt's Landscapes: Drawings and Prints, Na- tional Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 241. Schneider's mono- graph on Rembrandt's landscapes, published later in the same year, cites the Lugt identification of the locale (C. Schneider, Rembrandt's Landscapes, New Haven-London, 1990, p. 44).

7 For discussion of polarities in Netherlandish landscape, see R. H. Fuchs, "Over het landschap. Een verslag naar aanleiding van Jacob van Ruisdael. Het Korenveld," Tijdskrift voor Geschiedenis LXXXVI (1973) pp. 281-92; L. Vergara, Rubens and the Poetics of Landscape, New Haven-London, 1982, pp. 43-57 and L. O. Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art, University Park-London, 1989, p. 19 and p. 210, notes 48-50. Ziemba has discussed emotive polarities in Rembrandt's landscapes (A. Ziemba, "Rembrandts Landschaft als Zinnbild: Versuch einer ikonologische Deutung," Artibus et Historiae XV [1987], pp. 112-29); Werbke, in proposing the use of rhetorical de- vices in Landscape with Three Trees, noted dialectical contrasts in its compositional arrangement. (Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschafts- radierung mit drei Baumen,"' p. 250).

8 Beginning with Gersaint in 1751 ("...on voit tomber la pluie"), most writers have seen these powerful slashes of drypoint as rain. Occasionally, however, they have been interpreted as rays of sun: by C. White (Rembrandt as an Etcher, London, 1969, vol. I, p. 200) and by Campbell ("Rembrandt's Etsen," p. 24 and p. 33, note 25) who sees streams of the setting sun and makes comparisons (unconvincing in my view) to Rembrandt's depictions of light rays in such prints as The Descent from the Cross of 1633 (B. 81) or Circumcision in the Stable of 1654 (B. 47). Indeed, the angle of the drypoint lines in Landscape with

Three Trees is considerably more acute than that of the shadows cast by the trees at the right, indicating that they cannot be rays of sun.

9 On patriotism as an impetus for depicting local views, see R Sutton, Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987, p. 2 and D. Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1980, p. 11. S. Schama has described the Dutch struggles with the sea and the implications of territorial reclamation in both geographical and moral terms in The Embar- rassment of Riches, New York, 1987, pp. 15-50. For technical discussion of diking and poldering operations in the Dutch landscape, see J. J. J. M. Beenakker et. al., Strijd tegen het Water: Het Beheer van Land en Water in het Zuiderzeegebeid, Zuiderzeemuseum, Enkhuizen, 1992.

10 On the symbolic implications of trees, see 0. Schmitt, "Baum," in Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. II, Stuttgart-Waldsee, 1948, pp. 63-73 and D. Davies, "The Evocative Symbolism of Trees," pp. 32-42 in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, ed. D. Cosgrove, S. Daniels, Cambridge, 1988.

11 Significantly, the first state of the print, dated 1653, reveals that Rembrandt worked intensely on the juxtaposed tree and crucifix before finishing the composition as a whole. On the association of tree and cross in Rembrandt's prints, see S. D. Kuretsky, "Rembrandt's Tree Stump: an iconographical attribute of St. Jerome," The Art Bulletin LVI, no. 4 (1974), pp. 571-80.

12 C. Brown, Dutch Landscape: The Early Years, Haarlem and Amsterdam 1590-1650, National Gallery, London, 1986, p. 226. Rembrandt represented the three crosses directly in his oval etching of Christ Between the Two Thieves (B. 79) of ca. 1641 and, more fully, in the major drypoint of 1653 known as "The Three Crosses" (B. 78), which he radically reworked into a virtually new conception of the subject in the fourth state around 1660.

13 This important point was made by Werbke ("Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,"' pp. 232-33, 239-40), who cited the additional example of Rembrandt's 1656 etching (B. 29) ofAbraham Entertaining the Angels and related Rembrandt's landscape print to late medieval mosaics and paintings of Christian subjects with three trees. Werbke's intricate hypothesis (pp. 237-42) that Landscape with Three Trees is compositionally constructed of triangles as veiled references to both the Trinity and the Cult of the Virgin was less convincing to this reader. It should be noted that Rembrandt nearly always restricted himself to representing God in human guise (as Christ), although he did include the Dove of the Holy Ghost in his etchings of The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds (B. 44) of 1634 and The Presentation in the Temple (B. 49) of ca. 1639.

14 E Junius, The Painting of the Ancients in Three Books, London 1638, reprint, Gregy international Publishers, 1972, p. 94. As Walford has discussed, the practice of contemplating nature as a revelation of divine creation was also advocated by the Confession of Faith and Cat- echism of the Netherlands Reformed Churches and by seventeenth century Dutch poets, such as Spiegel and Cats, who defined the visible world as a second Book of Creation through which the "reader" could ascend from visual sensation to deeper contemplation of God. See E. J. Walford, Jacob van Ruisdael and the Perception of Landscape, New Haven-London, 1991, pp. 20-28.

15 Schneider, Rembrandt's Landscapes, p. 43. As Benesch rightly noted, the weather conditions and lighting effects in Landscape with Three Trees are closely foreshadowed in Rembrandt's drawing of ca. 1641 of Landscape with Cottages and Stormy Sky, in the Albertina, Vienna (O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, London, 1973, vol. IV, cat. no. 800, fig. 1002.)

16 Schneider has pointed out, however, that the otherworldly effect of this landscape has been considerably intensified by changes in its condition, resulting from deterioration of blue and green pigments, so that the domestic motifs in the scene now appear more obscure while the exotic structures have become more emphatic. (Rembrandt's Landscapes, pp. 66-67).

17 J. Walsh, "Skies and Reality in Dutch Landscape," Art in His- tory, History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth Century Dutch Culture, ed. D. Freedberg, J. de Vries, Santa Monica, 1991, pp. 95-117.

18 Seascapes with storms are discussed as expressions of discord and cosmic disorder in Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck, 1989. In printmaking, Jan van de Velde II, for example, featured rain in his depictions of Autumn and of the months of October and March, which belong to print series of the Four Seasons and the Twelve Months. (Hollstein, 32, 61, 68). Rain also appears in Renier Nooms's seascape titled Air from a series of the Four Elements. (illustrated Bartsch, vol. VI, no. 19 [132]). For a discussion of emblems involving rain, see note 23.

'19 That the fame of Rembrandt's print was based in large part upon its distinctive treatment of the sky is suggested by the fact that eighteenth century copies after Landscape with Three Trees often ex- aggerate the weather conditions in the scene, darkening the clouds and even adding forks of lighting, as in Captain William Baillie's (1723- 1810) melodramatic version. See C. White, D. Alexander, E. d'Oench, Rembrandt in Eighteenth Century England, Yale Center for British Art, 1983, pp. 83-84.

20 J. Huizinga, Dutch Civilization in the 17th Century and other Essays, trans. A. J. Pomerans, London, 1968, p. 16. On the representation of wind in 17th century Dutch painting, see M. Rostworowski, "Le vent dans le paysage hollandais du XVIIle siecle," Bulletin du Mus6e National de Varsovie XIV, no. 1-4 (1973), pp. 13-30.

21 As in all etchings, of course, the printing process reverses the image which the artist actually drew on the plate. Except for adjusting his signature, Rembrandt was not in the habit of working backwards in order to correct this reversal. Thus, the sole etching for which a full preparatory sketch is known, Cottage with a White Paling (B. 232), is the mirror image of the drawing in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. See also W. Boeck, "Rechts und Links in Rembrandts Druckgraphik," Wallraf Richartz Jahrbuch XV (1953), pp. 179-219.

22 Several factors may have encouraged viewers to assume that the wind blows from left to right: first, the habit of reading words and images in this direction, second, the fact that prevailing winds blow from west to east because of the earth's rotation, and finally the fact that modern maps (unlike seventeenth-century maps) are invariably oriented with West at the left. The left to right interpretation was already current in the nineteenth century as indicated by Emil Michel's comment "...the plain on which the waters are about to descend in floods...." (Rembrandt, His Life, His Work, His Time, New York 1894, vol. I, p. 318). More recent are Christopher White's statement that the three trees are "...set in the the threatening shadow of the approaching storm" (Rembrandt as an Etcher, London, 1969, vol. I, p. 199); J. R Filedt Kok's, "The dramatic contrasts ... seem to portend the approach of a storm" (Rembrandt Etchings and Drawings in the Rembrandt House, Maarssen, 1972, p. 126); Linda Stone-Ferrier's observation that the figures "...appear undaunted by the impending storm" (Dutch Prints of Daily Life, Lawrence, 1983, p. 170) and Cynthia Schneider's description of "...the tension between an impending storm and a burst of sunlight...." (Rembrandt's Landscapes, New Haven-London, 1990, p. 44). Correct identification of the wind direction as right to left has been made by Ziemba and by Kirsch, both of whom, however, used it for overly ro-

mantic interpretations-either as the triumph of sunlight over gloom (B. Kirsch, "Rembrandt and the Three Trees," Print Quarterly VIII, no. 4 [December 1991], pp. 436-38) or as an allusion to the victory of life over death, embodied in the destructive power of nature. (Ziemba, "Rembrandts Landschaft als Sinnbild," p. 124). Werbke, who sees a wind blowing from the right in the foreground and from the left in the background finds the weather ambiguous, suggesting it was not meant to be read realistically. (Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,'" p. 228), while Clifford Ackley sensibly leaves his options open: "...a passing or approaching rainstorm...." (Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, p. 199).

23 G. Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum selectissimorum, Arnhem, 1611-13, no. 58. p. 285. Not surprisingly, the volatile Dutch weather also inspired a number of emblems in which people or animals in the rain convey the idea that life's inevitable tempests or mis- fortunes are transient and survivable, if one stands firm or prudently takes shelter. See J. de Brune's "Wat is het volck, als wind en wolck?" ("What are people, but wind and cloud?"), no. XLII in Emblemata of Zinnewerck, Amsterdam, 1624; Roemer Visscher's "Duyckt laet overgaen" ("Duck under and let pass,") no. XXVII in Sinnepoppen, Amsterdam, 1614; and two further emblems (nos. 20 and 26) from Rollenhagen's Nucleus Emblematum: "Transeat" ("It passes") and "Durabo" ("I endure"). See A. Henkel and W. Sch6ne, Emblemata, Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1967, pp. 283-86, p. 1101.

24 J. Camerarius, Symbolorum et Emblematum ex re Herberia Desumtorum Centuria una Collecta, Frankfurt, Vol. I, 1654, no. 57.

25 It has been suggested that Rembrandt developed his unusual stormy sky as a device to hide such traces of earlier work on the plate. J. Springer proposed that Rembrandt was reusing a plate previously worked on by Seghers, as he was to do a decade later, in 1653, when he transformed Seghers's Landscape with Tobias and the Angel into a Flight into Egypt (B. 56). (Die Radierungen Hercules Seghers, Berlin, 1912, p. 12). More recently, Campbell has made an intricate argument proposing that the plate used forLandscape with Three Trees was origi- nally used for a discarded first state of Rembrandt's 1639 Death of the Virgin (B. 99). Campbell, who believes that the artist then turned the plate 90 degrees to the left and reused it for Landscape with Three Trees, sees traces of angels' heads and wings from the heavenly host in the earlier image as well as traces of the bed curtains and baldachin. (Campbell, "Rembrandts Etsen," pp. 2-33).

26 Two recent studies have been made of Rembrandt's use of illu-

sionistic curtain motifs. J. Moffit ("Rembrandt, Revelation and Calvin's Curtains," Gazette des Beaux-Arts CXIII [1989], pp. 175-86), discusses two paintings of the 1640's: a Holy Family in Kassel dated 1646 and a Supper at Emmaus in Copenhagen dated 1648 and interprets the veil or curtain as a traditional symbol of revelation, alluding to the perception of truth or the sensus spiritualis behind all things. W. Kemp (Rembrandt: La Sainte Famille ou I'art de lever un rideau, Paris, 1989) concludes that the curtain in the Kassel painting was intended less to unveil the scene as a religious revelation than to intensify the viewer's intimate connection with figures who, despite their physical separa- tion, must convey the idea of spiritual union. Both authors identify Rembrandt's source as an engraving of Christ at Emmaus by Crispijn van de Passe after Herman van Vollenhoven.

27 It should be noted further that in both prints trees function as important connectors of the realms of earth and sky, in both formal and symbolic terms. In The AngelAppearing to the Shepherds, a dead tree covered with vines and a living palm tree symbolize redemption through Christ's sacrifice.

28 Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,"' p. 235. As Schama has pointed out, Goltzius's memo- rial portrait engraving of William of Orange of 1581 is framed by four scenes from the life of Moses, with the column of cloud placed at the upper right. (Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, pp. 109-110, figs. 52 and 54).

29 Even beyond the obvious fact that the roster of (non-Jewish) Dutch artists of this period is replete with such Old Testament names as Abraham, Isaac, David, Jacob, Moses and Solomon, self-identification of the Dutch with the Israelites is exemplified in the practice of referring to Amsterdam as the "New Jerusalem." Patriotic appropria- tion of Old Testament narrative and imagery in the Dutch Republic is extensively analyzed in Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, pp. 93-125. The important cultural and commercial place of Jews in seventeenth-century Dutch society has been discussed by F Landsberger, Rembrandt, the Jews and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1946, pp. 3-26, by S. W. Morgenstein, R. S. Levine, The Jews in the Age of Rembrandt, Rockville, 1982, and further by Schama, pp. 587-96.

30 Chapman has investigated the origins of the Hollandse Tuin as medieval Marian hortus conclusus, as heraldic device signifying territorial inviolability, as attribute of the Province of Holland, and finally as symbol of the liberation of the United Netherlands in the revolt against Spain. She points out that the same motif was conflated with the emblem for Pictura on the title page of Philips Angel's "In Praise of Paint- ing." (H. R Chapman, "A Hollandse Pictura: Observations on the Title Page of Philips Angel's Lof der schilder-konst," Simiolus XVI, no 4 [1986], pp. 233-48). It is probable that Rembrandt was aware of this association of art with patriotic fervor, because Angel's oration, delivered in Leiden on 18 October 1641, was published in 1642, the year before Landscape with Three Trees.

31 Werbke, who has also connected Rembrandt's landscape with the Hollandse Tuin, sees the scene differently: as more enclosed and inaccessible in effect, and therefore as analogous to the Marian hortus conclusus and the paradise garden of the Song of Songs. He draws special attention to the wooden fence hidden in the vegetation beside the left tree as a characteristic Dutch motif: a barricade indicating a boundary (Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,"' p. 240).

32 J. Boon, Rembrandt, Das Graphische Werk, Vienna-Munich, 1963, p. 19.

33 Fishing as an allusion to idleness and the phlegmatic temperament is discussed by S. Koslow, "Hals' Fisherboys, Exemplars of Idle- ness," The Art Bulletin LVII (1975), pp. 418-32. As E. de Jongh has shown, fishing has also been associated since Antiquity with amorous activity, specifically to the deceitfulness of love that hides its hook under the bait. The term vissen itself could also have salacious

connotations-clearly spelled out in an erotic drawing by David Vinckboons (Institut Neerlandais, Paris) in which the fisherman holds his rod with one hand as both he and his female companion reach into the bait box between his knees. (E. de Jongh, Tot Lering en Vermaak, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1976, pp. 187-89, Fig. 46a). Ripa (lconologia 175, 245) used the fishing rod as an attribute of Fraud or Self-Interest, since luring fish with worms in order to catch them illus- trates differing action and intention. (This citation, and others relating to fishing, are noted in C. M. Armstrong, The Moralizing Prints of Cornelis Anthonisz., Princeton, 1990, p. 63 and p. 158, notes 7 and 8). Neither the age nor the decorous demeanor of Rembrandt's pair, however, suggests that his intended meaning was negative. Nor is there reason to believe that a religious allusion was intended, although the fish is a familiar symbol for Christ, while fishing itself can stand for

Christian conversion, as when Christ recruited the fishermen Peter and Andrew as apostles, telling them he would make them "fishers of men." (Mark 1: 16-18).

34 De Gheyn's print belongs to a series of the Four Temperaments (F W H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Wood- cuts, ca. 1459-1700, Amsterdam, n.d., vol. VII, p. 134, nos. 77-80). There is a reversed preparatory drawing in the Stidelsches Kunstinstitut, Frank- furt, inv. 13756, which van Regteren Altena has dated to the late 1590's. See J. Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn, Three Generations, The Hague, 1983, vol. II, p. 50. no. 196 and vol. III, pl. 46.

35 J. McDonald, The Origins of Angling, New York, 1963, p. 189. The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle, written around 1420 is attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, a nun and sportswoman. First printed in 1496 in the secondBook of St. Albans, it is preserved in an incomplete manuscript copy dating from ca. 1450 in the Yale Univerity Library. I am indebted for these references to Michael Vuksta, whose unpublished senior thesis written at Vassar College in 1988 (Frans Hals'Fisher Chil- dren) notes (p. 3) that the sport of fishing seems to have been preferred to hunting in The Netherlands because it was so compatible with the democratic ideals of the new nation.

36 Petrus Hondius, Dapes inemptae, of de Moufe-schans, dat is, de soeticheydt des buyten-levens, vergheselschapt met de boucken, 1621, verse 268. Cited in P A. F van Veen, De soeticheydt des buyten- levens, verghselschaft met de boucken: Het hofdicht als tak van een georgische litteratuur, Utrecht, 1985, p. 22. I am grateful to Beatrijs Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij for bringing van Veen's useful study to my attention. See also R. van Pelt, "Man and Cosmos in Huygens' Hofwijck," Art History IV, no. 2 (1981), pp. 150-74. The Dutch taste for pastoral imagery is fully discussed in A. McN. Kettering's The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and Its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair, 1983.

37 0. van Veen,Amorum Emblematum, Amsterdam, 1608, pp. 112- 13. The poem's full text reads as follows: "To use love in the light that Cupid lyketh not,/But in some secret place, or where no light is left,/ That there unseen he may committ dame venus theft,/As if bread savor'd best that were by stealing got."

38 I am grateful to Cynthia Schneider for bringing to my attention the counterproof (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) of Landscape with Three Trees, in which the image of the goat can be seen. The animal is not visible, even in extremely fine impressions of the completed etching, which leads me to believe that Rembrandt intentionally effaced the motif, either because it seemed redundant or because it has a negative moralizing connotation he wanted to avoid.

39 Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia, pp. 95-99. 40 Saenredam's print is based on Goltzius's pen and brown ink

drawing in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (See H. B. Mules, "Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin XLII, no. 4 [1985], pp. 5- 6). Werbke cites, in this connection, Goltzius's chiaroscuro woodcut of ca. 1589 in which an amorous couple appears under a large, richly foliated tree. (Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,'" p. 243, fig. 22). Significantly, Rembrandt made the same association between lovers and tree in two other etchings of the same period: The Sleeping Herdsman (B. 189) of 1644, in which a pair of lovers is observed by a voyeuristic old herdsman feigning sleep at the base of a large tree and The Omval (B. 209) of 1645, in which the lovers are hidden in the deeply shadowed foliage beside a big tree stump sprouting leafy shoots.

41 Some of the uncertainty and turmoil of this period may relate to the deaths of a number of significant figures on the national and international scene, beginning in 1640 with Frederick Henry's uncle

Henry Casimir, Stadholder of the three most northern Dutch provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe. For the second time since 1632 Frederick Henry attempted to have himself made successor, so that all seven provinces would be united under his direct leadership. (He was unsuccessful, except for Drenthe). The year 1641 saw the death of Francis van Aerssens, Frederick's Henry's principal advisor and con- sultant for foreign policy. In 1642 both Cardinal Richelieu and Marie de Medici died, followed in 1643 by King Louis XIII of France.

42 H. H. Rowen, The Princes of Orange: the Stadholders in the Dutch Republic, Cambridge, 1988, pp, 72-74.

43 For an extensive commentary on The Concord of the State that includes careful summaries of the extensive literature on this

painting, see J. Bruyn, B. Haak, S. H. Levie, P J. J. van Thiel, E. van de Wetering, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, Dordrecht, 1989, vol. III, pp. 341-56. The title, which Rembrandt presumably supplied himself, was listed in the 1656 inventory of the artist's estate, as "De eendragt van 't lant." Its identification with the Rotterdam painting has been generally accepted since the early nineteenth century. More prob- lematic is the date, since the inscription appears to have been added later. Bob Haak (Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, New York, 1969, p. 173) dates the work 1641, while Gary Schwartz (Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings, New York, 1985, p. 222) prefers 1642, as does Christian Timpel (Rembrandt, Mythos und Method, Antwerp, 1986, p. 226). The Rembrandt research team, relating the work to grisailles and landscapes of the '30's, preferred a date in the late 1630's. (A Corpus of Rembrandt's Paintings, p. 350).

44 The idea that the grisaille might have been prepared for an allegorical tableau intended for the triumphal entry was proposed by Schwartz, who interpreted the subject as a glorification of the role of the Amsterdam civic guard in sustaining the armed might of the Re- public (Schwartz, Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings, pp. 221-22). Re- cent laboratory examination, which revealed a formerly unknown mono- chrome sketch under the paint layers and other evidence of a completed work, led the authors to conclude that the technique seems closest to the type of modello made for large decorative projects. See P F J. M. Hermesdorf, E. van de Wetering and J. Giltay, "Enkele nieuwe gegevens over Rembrandts 'De Eendracht van het Land,'" Oud Holland C, no. 1 (1986), pp. 35-49.

The year 1642 also saw the completion of the Night Watch (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) in which Amsterdam guardsmen muster against a backdrop reminiscent of a triumphal arch. Similar temporary structures had been made for the triumphal entry of Marie de Medici into Amsterdam in 1638. (See E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Rembrandt: The Night Watch, Princeton, 1982, pp. 101-05). Although the Night Watch does not seem to record a particular event, it can be viewed as a tribute to the Amsterdam militia's capacity to muster in defense of its citi- zens and, in a broader sense, as a glorification of Dutch power.

45 It is unclear whether the threat to disunity existed among the United Provinces as a group or within the province of Holland itself. Haak has pointed out that in 1640 and 1641 the wealthy cities of Hol- land, from which the largest military appropriations were solicited, put themselves in direct opposition to Frederick Henry by discharg- ing numbers of troops in their pay (Rembrandt, His Life, His Work, His Time, p. 173-75). Furthermore, as Tumpel observed, the mounted horseman at the right, who turns his back on the battle, has the Amsterdam coat of arms on his saddle cloth. (Rembrandt, Mythos und Method, pp. 226-27).

46 On interpretation of the empty throne in the Rotterdam painting, see F Schmidt-Degener, "Rembrandt's Eendracht van het Land opnieuw beschouwd," Maandblad voor beelden kunsten XVIII (1941),

pp. 161-73; C. Bille, "Rembrandt's 'Eendracht van het Land' en Starters Wt-treckinge van de Borgery van Amsterdam," Oud Holland LXXI (1956),

pp. 24-34; W. Sch6ne, "Rembrandts Mann mit dem Goldhelm,"Jahrbuch derAkademie der Wissenschaft in Gdttingen (1972), pp. 33-98, quoted in Tumpel,Rembrandt, Mythos undMethod, p. 227. C. Picard has shown that the motif of the empty throne as a symbol of sovereignty origi- nated in the Orient, appearing in Greek and Roman art following the conquests of Alexander the Great. (C. Picard, "Le Trane Vide d'Alexandre dans la C6remonie de Cyinda et la Culte du Tr6ne Vide ' travers le Monde Greco-Romain," Cahiers Arch6logiques, Fin de L'Antiquit6 et Moyen Age, VII [1954], pp. 1-17). My thanks to Pamela Askew for this reference.

47 See J. Six, "Rembrandt's Eendracht van het Land," Onze Kunst XXXIII (1918), pp. 141-58. Interestingly, Six believed that the grisaille was a preparatory study for a print extolling the House of Orange.

48 A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, Ill, p. 355. J. G. van Gelder has interpreted the almost leafless oak in The Concord of the State as an emblem of Constantia or Concordia (van Gelder, "Rembrandt and his Time," A Symposium. Rembrandt and His Followers. Rembrandt after Three Hundred Years, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1973, pp. 8-9).

49 Stone-Ferrier has related Rollenhagen's emblem to Landscape with Three Trees. (L. Stone-Ferrier, Dutch Prints of Daily Life, pp. 169- 70). A similar image by Camerarius should also be noted: "Concussa Uberior" ("Being shaken up is productive"), in J. Camerarius,Symbolo- rum et Emblematum, no. XI, p. 13. In addition, A. Ziemba, citing emblems and biblical texts, sees Rembrandt's trees as symbols of piety as well as strength, as in the passage in Psalms describing the man who follows the Lord as "...a tree planted by the rivers of water ... his leaf shall not wither; and whatever he doeth shall prosper." (Psalms 1:1-3). See Ziemba, "Rembrandts Landschaft als Zinnbild," p. 124.

50 Haak has related the motto of the Dutch Republic to The Concord of the State (Haak, Rembrandt, His Life, His Work, His Time, p. 173).

51 Interestingly enough, only two states are known of the so-called "Hundred Guilder Print" (Christ Preaching) (B. 74, ca. 1639-49), a work very similar in intricacy of imagery and complex handling of the medium to Landscape with Three Trees, and dating from the same period. Other prints of like scale and artistic ambition tend to exist in multiple states: The Raising of Lazarus (B. 73, ca. 1632), ten states; Descent from the Cross (B. 81, 1633), five states; Ecce Homo (B. 77, 1636), five states; The Death of the Virgin (B. 99, 1639), three states; Portrait of Jan Six (B. 285, 1647), four states. The Three Crosses (B. 78, 1654), five states; Ecce Homo (B. 76, 1655), eight states. As Alpers (citing Houbraken) has observed, such reworkings of plates enhanced the artist's reputation and success, creating a demand that paid off at repeated stages of the working process. (S. Alpers, Rembrandt's Enter- prise: The Studio and the Market, Chicago, 1988, pp. 100-01).

52 Werbke traces the origin of this concept to Petrarch's dictum that truth is sweeter the more trouble it is to discover it and that the poet gives pleasure to the reader by letting him decipher the truth (Af- rica, IX, verse 96). Jacob Cats speaks of the notion of "agreeable obscurity" in Alle de Wercken, Amsterdam, 1700, p. 480. (Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,"' p. 231).

53 S. Dickey, "'Judicious Negligence': Rembrandt transforms an Emblematic Convention," The Art Bulletin LXVIII (1986), pp. 253-62. It is also worth noting that during this period Rembrandt produced a number of etchings relating to the theme of artistic practice, including The Artist Drawing from a Model (B. 192) of ca. 1639, Man Drawing from a Cast of ca. 1641 (B. 130) and three etchings of posed studio models of 1646 (B. 193, 194. 196).

54 Another approach to the idea of artistic process in this print is formulated by Werbke who analyzes Landscape with Three Trees (unconvincingly in my view) as a construction of compositional triangles. The author accordingly interprets the scene as a reflection of rhetorical modes deriving from Aristotle's definition of the triple structure of artistic process: usus (practice or active use),disciplina ormathesis (con- structive discipline and the following of rules), and ingenium (artistic inspiration). Werbke sees a triangle at the left, delineated by the straight diagonal lines, which he interprets as a reference to mathesis or artistic diligence as advocated by both Huygens and Sandrart, as well as Albrecht Durer in his Third Book of Study on Proportions. He describes a second triangular area at the right, including the draughtsman, which he relates to Usus and a third triangle (extending into the sky and outside the composition altogether) as a reference to ingenium or higher inspiration. (Werbke, "Rembrandts 'Landschaftsradierung mit drei Baumen,'" pp. 247-49).

55 From verses 40 and 41 of Karel van Mander's chapter on landscape in his Book of Painting (Het Schilderboek), published in 1604. Rembrandt's landscape also accords with van Mander's suggestions to enliven the scene with such motifs as figures "enjoying themselves by going for a walk" or "pass(ing) their time pleasantly on the water" or "fully laden carts" (verse 43). This important chapter is translated in full in C. Brown,Dutch Landscape. The Early Years, pp. 35-43. The original text, with facing transpositions into modern Dutch, is reproduced in H. Miedema, Karel van Mander: Den Grondt der edel vry schilder- const, 2 vols., Utrecht, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 203-19. For discussion of Van Mander's advice to insert figures into panoramic settings as a means of persuading the eyes to enter an image, thereby mobilizing vision itself, see W. S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander's Schilder-Boeck, Chicago and London, 1991, p. 12.

56 The Hoogstraten passage in its entirety reads: "Veel wonders is gewis in't zwerk te speuren, 't Zy als het stormt, of als de wolken scheuren Maer dat men dier of Schip daer uit bootseert, is domme waen van 't graeuw, dat ongeleert in onze konst, door waenzicht wort bedroogen; Een Schilder heeft hier toe vry beter oogen; Hy kent en kleur omtrek, nevens 't licht, En oordeelt met naeukeuriger gezicht." (Undoubtedly much is wonderful that may be perceived in the sky, whether it is stormy or whether the clouds tear apart, but to make an animal or a ship from them is a stupid delusion of the rabble who, ignorant of our art, are deceived by illusions; a painter has an eye much better adapted for this; he knows both color and outline, as well as the light, and judges with more accurate vision). S. van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst, anders derzichtbaere Werelt, Rotterdam, 1678, p. 140. Quoted by A. C. Esmeijer, "Cloudscapes in Theory and Practice," Simiolus IX, no. 3 (1977), p. 127. Esmeijer also notes (pp. 127-28) that extensive practical instruction on the rendering of skies and clouds was available early in the century in Gerard ter Brugghen's Verlichtery kunstboeck, published in Amsterdam in 1616 and reissued as the second part of Willem Goeree's Inleydinge tot de algeemeene teyken-konst, Middelburg, 1670. For discussion of clouds as images made by nature, in Antiquity and in the Renaissance, see H. W. Janson, "The 'Image Made by Chance' in Renaissance Thought," De Artibus Opuscula XL. Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, New York, 1961, pp. 256-58.

In addition, the curtain-like sheet of rain, which effectively unveils Rembrandt's landscape, seems to parallel Hoogstraten's memorable suggestion that the artist pull back the curtain within his deep- est self to visualize the scene first pictured there ("...in ons zelven de gordijn opschuiven, en in ons gemoed de geschiede daet eerst afschilderen..."). Hoogstraten, Inleyding, p. 178. My attention was

drawn to this passage by S. Alpers, Rembrandt's Enterprise, p. 45 and p. 134, footnote 28.

57 The northern artist who gave the most explicit visual form to the identification between artist and Creator was Albrecht DOrer in his

Christ-likeSelf-portrait of 1500 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich). For full analysis of the origins and significance of this composition, see J. L. Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, Chicago, 1993, pp. 63-186.

58 Gerard de Lairesse, Het Groot Schilderboek, Amsterdam, 1707, p. 371. The passage is quoted in Esmeijer, "Cloudscapes in Theory and Practice," p. 127.

59 The history of this motif, from the late fifteenth century through the nineteenth century, is explored in B. Weber, "Die Figur des Zeichners in der Landschaft," Zeitschrift fOr Schweizerische Archdologie und Kunstgeschichte XXXIV (1977), pp. 44-82.

60 Rembrandt included a figure sketching in the foreground of his pen and wash drawing, View of Diemen (private collection, The Hague), ca. 1649-50 (Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, IV, cat. no. 838).

61 Schneider, who also notes that Rembrandt has alluded specificially to his own creativity, suggests that the draughtman's pose may imply that he is inspired as much by inner vision as by what he actually sees. Rembrandt's Landscapes: Drawings and Prints, p. 241.

62 Chapman discusses the beret as a symbol of the idea of ge- nius, citing the berets worn by painters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the similar scholarly regalia used at Leiden University. See H. R Chapman, Rembrandt's Self-portraits, Princeton, 1990, pp. 48-50.

63 Chapman, Rembrandt's Self-portraits, p. 80. 64 E. Michel,Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, and His Time, 2 vols.,

New York, 1894, vol. I, p. 310. This point was also made by Eisler in 1918 (M. Eisler, Rembrandt als Landschafter, Munich, 1918, pp. 152- 54). White further suggested that buying a new house in 1639 may have awakened the artist's sense of location, encouraging him to un- dertake new explorations of the sites within walking distance of his home. (C. White, Rembrandt and His World, New York, 1964, p. 66).

65 Schwartz, Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings, p. 223. 66 Vergara (Rubens and the Poetics of Landscape, pp. 54-55) has

discussed Rubens's landscapes as expressions of the parallel between the creative powers of nature and artist, citing Biatostocki's examination of the origins of this association in Antiquity and the Renaissance. See also J. Bialostocki, "The Renaissance Concept of Nature and Antiq- uity," The Message of Images: Studies in the History of Art, Vienna, 1988, pp. 64-68. Bialostocki cites, among other evidence, Heraclitus's concept of human art as an imitation of the active creative forces of nature (natura naturans) in harmonizing opposed elements and Leonardo's famous observation that "Painting ... compels the mind of the painter to transform itself into the very mind of nature, to become an interpreter between nature and art..." (Biatostocki, pp. 64, 68). That the example of Rubens may have specifically inspired Landscape with Three Trees has been pointed out, among others, by C. Schneider, Rembrandt's Landscapes: Drawings andPrints, p. 241, and by C. White, who suggests that Rembrandt studied engravings by Bolswert after Rubens's landscapes. Rembrandt as an Etcher, I, pp. 199-200.

67 The 1656 inventory of Rembrandt's estate lists, under Rubens: "drawn or engraved portraits, and one album of trial prints [after his works]." (Haak, Rembrandt, His Life, His Work, His Time, p. 278).

68 M. Rooses, Rubens, trans. Harold Child, 2 vols., London, 1904, vol. II, p. 619-26. It would be difficult to imagine that Rembrandt was unaware of this sale or uninterested in it, considering his enthusiastic attendance at Amsterdam auctions. The original inventory of Rubens's

possessions, listing 319 paintings and issued in French by Jan Meurs, is known in a copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Fonds, St. Germaine, frangais, no. 1041). Subsequent publications and transla- tions of the inventory are listed by Rooses, Rubens, II, p. 620, note 1.

69 The period of Rembrandt's most obvious response to Rubens was the 1630's, illustrated by his Descent from the Cross of ca. 1633 (from the Passion Cycle for Frederick Henry, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich), probably based upon Lucas Vorsterman's engraving after Rubens'sDescent from the Cross in Antwerp Cathedral. The Vorsterman

apparently inspired Rembrandt to produce his own reproductive print (B. 81), dated 1633. (Haak, Rembrandt, His Life, His Work, His Time p. 99, figs. 145-47). Schneider has also noted the striking similarities between Rubens's Landscape with a Boar Hunt in Dresden of ca. 1616 and Rembrandt's 1634 Landscape with Diana and Acteon (Thede, the Prince of Salm-Salm) and between Rubens's Return from the Fields in the Pitti of ca. 1630-33 and Rembrandt's 1637 Landscape with a Coach in the Wallace Collection, London. (Schneider, Rembrandt's Landscapes, pp. 20, 77).

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