New additions to The Rembrandt Database

13 June 2018

The launch of the renewed website earlier this week marked the starting point for several new additions to the Rembrandt database.

In the last days research data from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (Harvard Art Museums) in Cambridge Massachusetts, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) in Amsterdam/Amersfoort and the archive of the Rembrandt Research Project kept at the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History have been published online. 

The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (Harvard Art Museums) holds the unique Alan Burroughs Collection of X-Radiographs, assembled and created between 1925-1944. The Rijksmuseum keeps a collection of X-ray films not only of paintings from their own collection, but also of paintings from other institutions. The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) keeps samples and sample documentation from Karin Groen, who carried out sample analyses on paintings worldwide. Thanks to our collaboration with these institutions we had the opportunity to make this documentation available in the Rembrandt Database. A substantial part of this documentation has already been published online in stages in the past couple of years. This week another generous amount of data on paintings from multiple institutions such as the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore and the Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden was made accessible online.

More research data from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (Harvard Art Museums), the Rijksmuseum, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) and the archive of the Rembrandt Research Project will be launched in stages over the course of the project. 

Many thanks to Henry Lie, Teri Hensick and Kate Smith from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Petria Noble, Anna Krekeler and Gwen Tauber from the Rijksmuseum and Muriel Geldof, Klaas-Jan van den Berg and Margriet van Eikema Hommes from the RCE, who have generously provided the database with the data and have been working on the presentation in close collaboration with the RKD. 

Light microscopy: capture (born digital), overall (sample), normal light (bright field), 20x (objective), 12 September 2016; Rembrandt, History Painting, dated 1626, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, inv./cat. no. B 564