We arrived back from Amsterdam yesterday evening. The purpose of the visit was to visit the Rembrandt/Carravaggio exhibition being jointly held by the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. As a fan of Carravaggio, this was a must see exhibition.

The exhbition itself was very well presented with a sequence of Rambrandt and Carravaggios presented adjacent to each other allowing the visitor to compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the styles of these two Baroque masters. A selection of paintings by Carravaggisiti at the beginning of the exhbition gave an overview of the influence that the troubled Carravaggio had on other artists who would paint in his style.

The pairing of the pictures is, at times, unusual. Carravaggios depiction of St Jerome translating the Bible from Greek to Latin is placed next to Rembrandts Bethsehba at her Bath. While it is unusual to have a man of the Church displayed next to a depiction of a naked woman, the ability of both painters to present of the two characters in a moment of reflection with no clutter or distraction for the viewer shows their virutosity with the brush.

What is striking is the similarity in styles of the two artists. As Carravaggio died when Rembrandt was a meagre four years old, they never had a chance to meet. Rembrandt never visited Italy and no Carravaggio painting existed that Rembrandt would have been able to study. Yet studying under lastman, who had seen and admired the works of Carravaggio, Rembrandt was able to learn many of the techniques that Carravaggio had so successfully used.

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