Rembrandt's Low Diction

Abstract

Intending Rembrandt scholars are early taught professional caution in connecting Dutch art and Dutch religion in general, Rembrandt and Calvinism in particular. Among their primary teachers, Rosenberg and Slive, for example, explain the need for scepticism in terms that amount to a prohibition: the Dutch were not uniformly Calvinist; the Twelve Years' Truce declared in 1 609 did not instantly and completely separate a Protestant north from a Catholic south; all of the artists of the north were not Protestant: 'Conclusions about the importance of Protestant creeds in the formation and achievement of seventeenth-century Dutch painting which do not take account of these facts are of limited value.'1 In fact, the only conclusion along these lines that escapes the distrust of these authorities is essentially uninteresting: ťone may perhaps admit that a general simplicity of taste has something to do with the moral attitude and Puritan spirit of Calvinism.'2

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