More Rembrandt Mysteries

There is a mystery that has been baffling scholars for a long time. Why did Rembrandt apply gold leaf to the surface of a sheet of copper and paint in oil atop. Why would he cover a perfectly and already beautiful copper surface? Was it the smoothness? Was it an experiment? Nobody really knows for sure. What is known is that it is an intriguing painting and many of Rembrandt’s techniques used here were applied in his subsequent paintings.

According to the information in Copper as Canvas, applying gold leaf to copper was an unusual technique not used by many throughout history. “The copper plate, which is one mm thick, was first covered with a grayish-white ground, consisting of white lead and chalk. then, over the entire surface of the ground, a thick layer of gold leaf was applied, which is visible today at the edges of the painting and as glittering dots in areas that are thinly covered with paint, such as the hauberk and the forehead”.

I saw this painting last year while visiting The Mauritshuis in The Hague. There are little sparkles of gold here and there, especially on the mustache, coming through the opaque layers of paint where the wet paint was incised with a sharp tool of some sort. In other areas where the paint layer is thin, the gold is glowing through the surface.

Have any of you tried applying gold leaf to copper? What are your thoughts? I think I will difinitely experiment with this in the very near future. Leave a comment on your experiments.