Rembrandt Revisited

Thanks to the philanthropy of Drs. Tobia and Morton Mower of Baltimore, more than 70 original etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn graced the walls of the FSU Museum of Fine Arts in the fall of 2013, to the delight of 12,000 museum visitors during the exhibition A Fortnight of Rembrandt: Selected Etchings from the Mower Collection. During the installation, arts photographer Jon Nalon created high-resolution images of each print. Now, through the generosity of the Mowers and the resources of the Art History Media Center, these detailed images are available to FSU faculty and students for teaching and research.

The images in our database are constantly updated as better sources become available. For quality and veracity, nothing is as reliable as a photograph directly from the original object – and even with original photos, quality can be lost with every step from the object to our collection. Working directly with the original photographs from the etchings, we are able to give the viewer an experience almost as good as standing in front of the object. In fact the experience is enhanced by the ability to expand and display on a large screen close details of the prints, allowing a room full of students to take in at once the precision and variety of every line in an etching.

The exhibit provided an unmatched opportunity for students and the public to witness up close Rembrandt’s extraordinary handling of the etching medium, as well as to appreciate the extensive worlds he created in miniature in his prints.  Now, thanks to these wonderful photos, we can recreate and even enhance that museum experience in today’s classroom through magnified details showing the evidence of Rembrandt’s hand, from the quick scribblings of his etching needle across the wax ground to the deep gashes of his drypoint needle into the copper plate.