DOI Artikel:
Kozieł, Andrzej: Rembrandt van Rijn and Michael Willmann, or a story of dispelling a certain myth
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14573#0171
REMBRANDT VAN RUN AND MICHAEL WILLMANN
157
trace of the artist's stay in Amsterdam was a recipe for "a beautiful golden varnish", which he learnt - as it
was admitted by Willmann himself- from Bartholomaus van der Helst25.
Questioning of the belief about Willmann's éducation at Rembrandt's workshop gained support from
the researchers of the work of the master from Amsterdam, who initiated the process of revising the over-
used opinion of Willmann as "Rembrandt's pupil". Almost simultaneously Ben Broos placed Willmann
among numerous artists acknowledged falsely as Amsterdam master's apprentices26, and Werner Sumowski
recognised the Silesian artist as a creator remaining under only limited influence of Rembrandt and he ex-
cluded Willmann's works from the monumental corpuses of paintings and drawings of the pupils of the
master from Amsterdam27. As the resuit in the circle of the researchers of Rembrandt and his school the name
of Willmann was crossed defmitively off the list of his pupils and it is now mentioned very rarely among
those creators who only kept in contact with the master28.
Excluding Willmann from the group of Rembrandt's pupils caused the discussion on the Silesian art-
ist's éducation to concentrate on answering the question: what Sandrart really meant by the words about
"Jacob Backer as well as Rembrandt and some others' methods" that Willmann was supposed to acquire in
Amsterdam, and what actually were "the strict exercises" to be continued by the young painter "day and
night" about? The opportunity to make an attempt to answer the questions came with the international exhi-
bition of Willmann's paintings, arranged by the Residenzgalerie in Salzburg and Muzeum Narodowe in
Wrocław in 1994. In the exhibition catalogue Riidiger Klessmann, analysing the relations between Willmann
and The Low Countries recognised that Sandrart's words about Jacob Backer and Rembrandt's "methods"
should be interpreted in the context of Willmann not continuing his artistic éducation in Italy. The young
painter from Kônigsberg would have referred to the encouraging examples of Backer and Rembrandt, who
developed their skills in the Netherlands only and who never went to Italy. According to Klessmann, Will-
mann's reasoning may be compared to the young Rembrandt and Lievens's position, as they were both sup-
posed to reply to Constantijn Huygens, exhorting them to visit Italy, that "in their youth there is no time to
lose for travelling", and besides "they had seen the greatest Italian paintings behind the Italian borders, and
the paintings which widely scattered everywhere would have taken much effort to find there, they have here
in great amounts gathered in one place"29.
II
Both Klessmann and former scholars gave their opinions about the relations between Willmann and
Rembrandt based exclusively on Sandrart's text, not knowing any single work of the Silesian artist from his
Amsterdam sojourn. The situation changed after it had been discovered that the commonly known séries of
twenty prints by Josef Gregory, carried out in 1794-1795 after Willmann's drawings, mostly lost at présent,
edited in Prague in 1805, is the most probable documentation of the artist's sketches created in Amsterdam.
The sketches were the resuit of that "strict exercises" led "day and night" with the use of the engraving col-
lection of "prototypes"30 bought in Amsterdam. In case of as many as fourteen sketches of this séries it was
25 "Ein Schônnen Goldt firnitz Zu machen auff silber zu laisiren, AuB Amsterdam von H(err) van der Elst gelernt" - Strahovskâ
knihovna, Prague, sign. AY XII 15. What is interesting, Bartholomaus van der Helst most probably gave Willmann an incorrect
recipe, since after the very first attempt of using it the recipe text was crossed out by the painter, and on the margin there appeared
a note: "Dieser firniB ist falsch". •
26 B.P.J. Broos, Famé shared is famé doublée/, [in:] The Impact of a Genius. Rembrandt, his Pupils and Followers in the
Seventeenth Century. Exhibition catalogue, Waterman Gallery, Amsterdam, Groningen Muséum, Groningen, Amsterdam 1983,
p. 49.
27 W. Sumowski, Gemàlde der Rembrandt-Schùler, vol. 1, London 1983, pp. 82-83, and idem, The Drawings of the
Rembrandt School, vol. 10, New York 1992, p. 5413.
28 As the example cornes the last publication by Gary Schwartz, where the author made a key to the analysis of Rembrandt's
artistic personality from the completely incredible Houbraken's claim about "the conversations" led by Willmann with the master
from Amsterdam. See: G. Schwartz, Das Rembrandt Buch. Leben und Werk eines Génies, Miinchen 2006, p. 48.
29 Klessmann, Willmann i Niderlandy..., pp. 55-56.
30 Historische Darstellungen in 10 Blâttern nach dem bertihmten Meister Willmann. In Kupfer gebracht und herausgegeben
von Josef Gregory. Kupferstecher und Zeichnungslehrer in Prag, l Heft, 1805 (10 engravings), II. Heft, 1805 (10 engravings) -
Prague, Nârodni galerie, Grafickâ sbirka, Inv. Nos. R 55001-55020. See A. Kozieł, Michaela Willmanna droga na "szczyt}-
157
trace of the artist's stay in Amsterdam was a recipe for "a beautiful golden varnish", which he learnt - as it
was admitted by Willmann himself- from Bartholomaus van der Helst25.
Questioning of the belief about Willmann's éducation at Rembrandt's workshop gained support from
the researchers of the work of the master from Amsterdam, who initiated the process of revising the over-
used opinion of Willmann as "Rembrandt's pupil". Almost simultaneously Ben Broos placed Willmann
among numerous artists acknowledged falsely as Amsterdam master's apprentices26, and Werner Sumowski
recognised the Silesian artist as a creator remaining under only limited influence of Rembrandt and he ex-
cluded Willmann's works from the monumental corpuses of paintings and drawings of the pupils of the
master from Amsterdam27. As the resuit in the circle of the researchers of Rembrandt and his school the name
of Willmann was crossed defmitively off the list of his pupils and it is now mentioned very rarely among
those creators who only kept in contact with the master28.
Excluding Willmann from the group of Rembrandt's pupils caused the discussion on the Silesian art-
ist's éducation to concentrate on answering the question: what Sandrart really meant by the words about
"Jacob Backer as well as Rembrandt and some others' methods" that Willmann was supposed to acquire in
Amsterdam, and what actually were "the strict exercises" to be continued by the young painter "day and
night" about? The opportunity to make an attempt to answer the questions came with the international exhi-
bition of Willmann's paintings, arranged by the Residenzgalerie in Salzburg and Muzeum Narodowe in
Wrocław in 1994. In the exhibition catalogue Riidiger Klessmann, analysing the relations between Willmann
and The Low Countries recognised that Sandrart's words about Jacob Backer and Rembrandt's "methods"
should be interpreted in the context of Willmann not continuing his artistic éducation in Italy. The young
painter from Kônigsberg would have referred to the encouraging examples of Backer and Rembrandt, who
developed their skills in the Netherlands only and who never went to Italy. According to Klessmann, Will-
mann's reasoning may be compared to the young Rembrandt and Lievens's position, as they were both sup-
posed to reply to Constantijn Huygens, exhorting them to visit Italy, that "in their youth there is no time to
lose for travelling", and besides "they had seen the greatest Italian paintings behind the Italian borders, and
the paintings which widely scattered everywhere would have taken much effort to find there, they have here
in great amounts gathered in one place"29.
II
Both Klessmann and former scholars gave their opinions about the relations between Willmann and
Rembrandt based exclusively on Sandrart's text, not knowing any single work of the Silesian artist from his
Amsterdam sojourn. The situation changed after it had been discovered that the commonly known séries of
twenty prints by Josef Gregory, carried out in 1794-1795 after Willmann's drawings, mostly lost at présent,
edited in Prague in 1805, is the most probable documentation of the artist's sketches created in Amsterdam.
The sketches were the resuit of that "strict exercises" led "day and night" with the use of the engraving col-
lection of "prototypes"30 bought in Amsterdam. In case of as many as fourteen sketches of this séries it was
25 "Ein Schônnen Goldt firnitz Zu machen auff silber zu laisiren, AuB Amsterdam von H(err) van der Elst gelernt" - Strahovskâ
knihovna, Prague, sign. AY XII 15. What is interesting, Bartholomaus van der Helst most probably gave Willmann an incorrect
recipe, since after the very first attempt of using it the recipe text was crossed out by the painter, and on the margin there appeared
a note: "Dieser firniB ist falsch". •
26 B.P.J. Broos, Famé shared is famé doublée/, [in:] The Impact of a Genius. Rembrandt, his Pupils and Followers in the
Seventeenth Century. Exhibition catalogue, Waterman Gallery, Amsterdam, Groningen Muséum, Groningen, Amsterdam 1983,
p. 49.
27 W. Sumowski, Gemàlde der Rembrandt-Schùler, vol. 1, London 1983, pp. 82-83, and idem, The Drawings of the
Rembrandt School, vol. 10, New York 1992, p. 5413.
28 As the example cornes the last publication by Gary Schwartz, where the author made a key to the analysis of Rembrandt's
artistic personality from the completely incredible Houbraken's claim about "the conversations" led by Willmann with the master
from Amsterdam. See: G. Schwartz, Das Rembrandt Buch. Leben und Werk eines Génies, Miinchen 2006, p. 48.
29 Klessmann, Willmann i Niderlandy..., pp. 55-56.
30 Historische Darstellungen in 10 Blâttern nach dem bertihmten Meister Willmann. In Kupfer gebracht und herausgegeben
von Josef Gregory. Kupferstecher und Zeichnungslehrer in Prag, l Heft, 1805 (10 engravings), II. Heft, 1805 (10 engravings) -
Prague, Nârodni galerie, Grafickâ sbirka, Inv. Nos. R 55001-55020. See A. Kozieł, Michaela Willmanna droga na "szczyt}-