What percentage of Rembrandt paintings were actually painted by Rembrandt?
In the third episode of Paul Cantor’s series on Commerce and Culture he goes in-depth into the economics of painting.
Artists used to work pretty much exclusively in a patronage setting. They were commissioned by usually very wealthy people to create art to decorate their homes. It’s hard to imagine that the paintings we see in museums now were made to be decorations in someone’s home, but often that was the initial purpose. A great example of patronage was Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel. This was a work that could never be moved. It was created for one person; the Pope.
The marketing of art started when the idea of paintings on wood and other portable surfaces came along. If one person wasn’t interested in their art, they could go to the next person. This started the ball rolling to create to a fully marketable profession.
Maybe the most interesting thing to me in the podcast was when he talked about Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. Rubens had a “factory” as Cantor called it, where there were younger artists who were basically apprenticing under him. Because of this, he was able to make sketches and then give the actual art to his apprentices to complete. However, he could still market these paintings as “Rubens.” He basically created a brand. People could look at a painting and say, “that looks Rubenesque,” even though the actual painting might not have been painted by him.
Rembrandt did something very similar, though I think less was known about it. What got me, was Cantor talked about how there is a group of experts going around and inspecting “Rembrandt” paintings deciding whether they are actually Rembrandt or if they were made by the younger artists working with him.
What’s fascinating is that you may have a painting that has been believed to be a Rembrandt for almost 400 years, maybe it’s worth is at 50 million dollars. This group of experts come in and discover that this painting was actually painted by one of his apprentices. That painting is now lucky if it’s worth 1 million dollars. It may have been believed to be Rembrandt for a long time, it may look identical in style to his other works, but because it’s not actually by him, it’s worth is chopped severely.
I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me too much because culture today works almost the same way. You see a kid wearing headphones with a big “b” on the side. Headphones price: $300. Take those exact same headphones. Same color, same technology, everything is exactly the same except for now take the “b” off the side. Headphones price: $70.
People think that they pay for quality, but people often mistake quality for branding. These artists learned how to brand themselves and because of that, they became wildly successful.
What a fascinating history that I can’t wait to check further into.