The 2021 issue of the Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis includes four articles devoted to various topics related to Rembrandt and his circle of pupils, friends and followers. All four articles focus on recent finds.

The issue opens with Steven Nadler’s discovery concerning Menasseh ben Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa, the publication for which Rembrandt produced a series of etchings. Nadler carefully works out the implications for our interpretation of the relationship between artist and scholar. From the Amsterdam City Archive, Mark Ponte and Eric Schmitz present a newly-discovered Rembrandt document revealing a previously unknown portrait commission, and introduce us to the players involved. The museum’s recent exhibition on Hansken the elephant prompted new insights by Leonore van Sloten into an elephant drawing and the role of existing imagery in Rembrandt’s workshop. And lastly, David de Witt makes the case for adding a well-known drawing of an artist’s atelier to the oeuvre of Cornelis Bisschop, removing it from that of Jan Lievens. This issue rounds off with two In memoria for two important scholars, C. Willemijn Fock and Ernst van de Wetering.

The Kroniek was recently relaunched in digital form and is now available on the website of The Rembrandt House Museum.

Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 2021

Steven Nadler and Victor Tiribás
Rembrandt’s Etchings for Menasseh ben Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa: A Mystery Solved?

Mark Ponte and Eric Schmitz
Rembrandt paints master carpenter Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh. An unknown Rembrandt from the archive of the Amsterdam notaries

Leonore van Sloten
On Rembrandt and Elephant Buttocks “from life”

David de Witt
A Drawn Studio Scene by Cornelis Bisschop, instead of Jan Lievens

In memoriam Willemijn Fock (1942 2021)

In memoriam Ernst van de Wetering (1938-2021)