Today is Rembrandt's Birthday

Google's doodle has very kindly informed us that today would have been Rembrandt's Birthday.

While checking out his Wikipedia entry, I found this rather stunning:

A letter published in 2004 by Margaret S. Livingstone and Bevil R. Conway, of Harvard Medical School, suggests that Rembrandt's eyes failed to align correctly, and that consequently he suffered from stereo blindness. This conclusion was made after studying 36 of Rembrandt's self-portraits. Because he could not achieve normal binocular vision, his brain automatically switched to one eye for many visual tasks. This disability could have helped him to flatten images he saw, and then put it onto the two-dimensional canvas. Livingstone theorized that this was an advantage for the painter: "Art teachers often instruct students to close one eye in order to flatten what they see. Therefore, stereo blindness might not be a handicap—and might even be an asset—for some artists."

Rembrandt has a stellar legacy of Christian artwork. Thanks to the wonderful website of wikipaintings.org we can enjoy all his works over here.

Among his choice works:

The Return of the Prodigal Son (1669)

The Denial of Peter (1660)

Adoration of the Magi (1632)

There is lots more to feast on in that link. What a gifted man. Happy Birthday Rembrandt!

Comments

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