Rembrandt's Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts

Portraitures during the Baroque period were symbols of temporal power and wealth, and a means to affirm the authority of secular leaders displayed in all their opulent garments. Surviving off the earnings of his wealthy patrons, Rembrandt van Rijn was able to capture on his canvas his melancholy views and perceptions of his patrons and persons of status in the portraits that he created of them and even himself. Known for his ability to manipulate light and shade to present his subjects in an eerie, wistful, and yet moving and even compassionate manner, Rembrandt illustrated the melancholy and loathsome aspect of the human experience through a sympathetic lens tinted with dark streaks. Such ability, creativity, and emotion are exhibited in his portraiture of Nicolaes Ruts (1631), and the presentation of his ideas and perspective are also mirrored in the actual arrangement and design of the West Gallery in which the painting is on display in the Frick Collection.

The use of encompassing gloom in Rembrandt’s Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts conveys a sense of impending doom, sympathetically mocking the noble class and humanity as a whole for their vanity in the face of their mortality. The tragedy of death as the great equalizer for the entirety of humankind despite wealth or status is portrayed by the contrast of the creeping shadows with the subject’s opulent garment. The encircling shade constructs a dismal contrast to the eloquent, high status garb worn by Ruts that, if not for the darkness, would otherwise construe a lighter, more jaunty atmosphere in the painting. A black void is depicted descending from above Rut’s head and slowly beginning to engulf him as the shadows painted by Rembrandt follow the contours of Ruts’ clothing. It seems as if the darkness is preparing to fuse and incorporate Ruts into itself by molding itself to the curves of his body, surmounting the light glow that surrounds Ruts’ body as a sort of living aura.

The contrast between the lightness of the subject’s face and collar and vapid darkness of his pupils conveys a sorrowful and sympathetic presentation of the tragedy of humanity. The surrounding darkness and gloom brings attention and focus to the centralized pale face and brilliant white collar of Ruts, which is contrasted by the two beady blackened pupils that create tiny voids in the light face. These black pupils descend into the underlying dark shadows that encompass the rest of the surroundings, creating a pitiful emptiness in the eyes of a man of high status, of a man of power and control. His control over his life seems lost in the pitfalls of his eyes, which beckon the surrounding shadows to encompass the central space of illuminated value in the portrait. The man, and humanity as a whole, falls into death from within as well as from without, with time bringing corruption, decay, and the final journey to the grave that all men must undertake.

Rembrandt’s melancholy view of impending doom and the vanity of success and fortune is mirrored in the arrangement of the paintings in the West Gallery of the Frick, which is construed in such a manner as to give the atmosphere of death and desolation with hints of hope and salvation. The West Gallery is reminiscent of a coffin, with its long hall, coffered ceilings, and black walls, giving the impression that the paintings are held within a tomb. The walls are lined with paintings of various subjects, including the Virgin being educated, the scenery of a dark-watered lake, and portraits of other patrons and prominent contemporary social figures, but all, with the exception of J..M.W. Turner’s paintings of the sea, contain looming shadows that flow through the paintings. This particular set up illustrates the notion of the vanity of this world and the importance humans place on it since ultimately, we will be consumed by the black abyss of death and what had mattered in life will be of no importance under the soil in a wooden coat. Humans face the same fate as the paintings, to lie dormant and entombed in the darkness.

Rembrandt’s deliberate uses of shadowing and light aid in conveying his dismal outlook on life and to question of whether humanity can actually bestow meaning to its vain successes and accomplishments. By focusing this issue in his portraitures of singular figures, Rembrandt portrays the idea that although advances and accomplishments will serve to benefit all of humanity as it progresses through the ages, the individual will not ultimately benefit as it will pass into the shadow of death. Rembrandt’s Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts echoes the repeated declaration found in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity”.