The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 16

Rembrandt: Compliant Calvi
Retired University of Toronto English
professor William H. Halewood
has theorized that Calvinist
Reformation doctrine created a
problem for artists in the Netherlands
by redefining the concept of grace. As a
result, artists struggled to portray grace
in a manner that aligned to Calvinist
doctrine. Rembrandt allegedly solved
the problem when he “invented” an artistic
style to satisfy this redefinition. 1
While biblical topics indeed comprised
a healthy percentage of Rembrandt’s
subject matter and appear to portray
the Calvinist conception of grace, the
artist also expressed social and political
commentary through his oeuvre with
a remarkable independence from Reformation
ideology. By comparing and
contrasting details of Rembrandt’s goals
as an artist, his social attitudes, and
the themes of his wide-ranging works
against the context of the religious climate
in which he lived, a strong suggestion
emerges that the “invention” of
Halewood’s focus may never have been
the artist’s intention at all.
The problem that Halewood perceives
for Netherlandish artists is that
the Protestant concept of grace—the
unmerited gift from God of divine love
and protection—was not being portrayed
properly in art. Anti-humanist
Protestant austerity stifled the spectacular
celebration of human life that had
developed in Renaissance art and, in
some places, almost completely eliminated
it. In the Netherlands, Reformers
believed the good life was unattainable
because of man’s sinfulness thus, art
must be redefined along the same lines
as religion’s redefinition and grace, as
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