To begin with, I should say that portraits are artistic representations of people in which their faces and expressions are predominant. When artists paint portraits they usually intend to show both appearance of the person portrayed and the mood of this person. The current paper is devoted to comparison of the two portraits of the famous artists: Rembrandt’s Woman with a Pink and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap. The comparison will be made through the following perspectives: the way the sense of dimension is created; the way light and shade are used; and the emphases the authors of the two works make.
Starting with general remarks on the portraits, I should say that both of them depict people in their still positions. Woman with a Pink shows a woman at about fifty five with a pink in her hand. The flower is a symbol of marital fidelity. The woman seems to stand still in her intention to present the flower to a beloved person.
When I look at the portrait it seems to me that the life around the woman that Rembrandt has portrayed has stopped for a while. The woman is absorbed in her thoughts that no one but her knows. I suppose that she thinks of the days she and her husband spent together and the words of love she was going to tell him. Still, the great painter has managed to depict the woman in such a way so that the viewer becomes puzzled with the mystery the woman’s glance is full of.
The second work under consideration portrays a man of thirty. The first point of comparison that comes to my mind is the eyes of both persons. The woman and the man seem to look into the distance without a concrete purpose. If in the woman’s case I can at least assume what she thinks of, in the case of the man in a red cap I cannot even suggest what he is troubled with.
The people from the two portraits wear contemporary attire with the emphasis made on the jewelry the woman has on. Further, I will focus on this emphasis.
The Woman with a Pink strikes with the sense of dimension that the author created. The use of line and a cold bright red color that Rembrandt used for the woman’s attire is responsible for this effect. The richly dark colored red strokes used in different vectors by the painter encourage one to think that the woman’s dress is fluffy and a sort of aerial. It seems that the character of line throughout the painting also contributes to this sense of dimension. The contours are not contrast, but smooth, thus, the depicted objects are in line with each other and perceived as a whole unity. To my mind, the sense of dimension is important for understanding the message of the painter that consists in marital fidelity among people. The thing is that this notion is a rather vague one, and I suppose that the painter has created the sense of dimension to highlight the broadness of this notion.
As for the second portrait under analysis, the viewer’s attention is drawn to the way the man’s face is depicted. The brushstrokes seem to be used in a chaotic manner. I believe that this contributes to the feeling that the portrait of the man is not a result of a mere author’s imagination, but a portrait of a real contemporary of Hans Holbein the Younger. Often, portraits show persons looking directly at the painter, thus, the subject is most successfully engaged with the viewer. But in the portrait described the man does not look at the viewer directly, he seems to look for some other dimension, not the one he is now in.
His face gets more light from the author than other details of the portrait. Actually, the painter did not focus on small details at all, he rather concentrated on the man’s face and cloths. The lightened face of the man encourages the viewer to see that it is drawn in a correct proportion. I am inclined to think that the author intended to render a wide range of traits common for men: from strong will and determination to affectionate care of others and passionate love to the beloveds. The facial expression here does not seem to be an idealized one, on the contrary, it is rather captured. Holbein’s use of line and color in this portrait thus fulfills expressive rather than descriptive functions.
The use of light in Rembrandt’s work is also significant. As well as in the Portrait of a Man, the woman’s face is painted in the light. The carnation the woman holds in her hand is also given an additional light. My belief is that in such a way the two goals are achieved: first, the viewer’s attention is drawn both to the face and the flower, and, second, both inner and outer beauty of the woman is shown.
As for the first point, the facial expression is predetermined by the meaning the flower carries, it renders the woman’s acceptance of her duty and, what is more important, willingness to keep fidelity to her husband or some other person she is in love with. As for the second point, though people have different views on appearances of others, as a rule, they have a similar understanding of the beauty of their inner worlds. Judging from the portrait of the woman with a carnation, I can see that criteria for appreciating human beauty have changed significantly since the work has been created, but the moral values have remained the same.
I observe that in the two portraits colors come to life under action of light. In Rembrandt’s work due to the shades the painter has used, the red color ranges from purple to yellow even. The shades create harmony and unity of color that symbolizes the inner world of the woman portrayed. In Holbein’s Portrait light, colors and shades are used to render the traits common for males. Much remains mysterious; the author gives a viewer an opportunity to find answers to all possible questions that might arise as far as the men’s mystery is concerned.
Lighting has always been regarded as one of the most crucial elements in creating portraits. As clear from the stated above, light is used to create highlights and shadows, depicting the smallest details and creating depth in such a way.
Apart from the emphases mentioned above, Rembrandt makes an emphasis on the jewelry the woman wears. It might stand either for the woman’s wealth, an exquisite taste and devotion to fashion tendencies or for her fidelity to the husband that is represented through the jewelry as well, of course, in case the latter was presented by him.
It is obvious that the accent is made on the flower, apart from the woman, this is the main character of the work. The flower is quite ordinary; it does not strike with some originality. To my mind, the same goes with the concept of fidelity – it is has an unfading power to bound people together, centuries go by and the power never loses its significance. Rembrandt seems to suggest the parallel: an ordinary flower – an ordinary feeling. There is nothing strange in the use of colors to depict the flower and it is nothing strange in the feeling the woman’s possesses. What is strange is how skillfully the author managed to render the complex notion through a simple symbol.
In the second portrait the emphasis is made on the hat that the man wears. Even the title emphasizes the idea. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in the fashion that reigned at the time the representative of which Holbein has portrayed and I cannot dwell on the possible symbol that the hat might render, but I believe that the viewer should not underestimate its importance. To my mind, the red hat attracts the viewers’ attention to the fact that the man’s face looks in some concrete direction. Though we do not know where exactly he looks at, this has certain meaning for them, as reflected on his face.
Two portraits compared, I conclude that the painters resorted to various techniques both to represent the man and the woman in some period of their lives and to depict the inner world of each of them. As many other Rembrandt and Holbein’s works, these portraits depict human life in its various dimensions. And this is what makes them really immortal.