ABSTRACT
'Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop', displayed at the Altes Museum in Berlin, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the National Gallery of London in 1991 and 1992, was the most consequential and controversial Rembrandt exhibition of the twentieth century. At the time of the exhibition the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) had published only on the first seventeen years of Rembrandt's career. The workshop section of the exhibition received the most critical attention at the time. The objections to this part of the show pertained to premises of the exhibition mentioned earlier and the choice of paintings used to demonstrate them. Innovations in the exhibition's catalogue proved to be successful and were often imitated. The ideas presented in two essays by Ernst van de Wetering, on 'Rembrandt's Technique in the Service of Illusionism' and 'The Invisible Rembrandt, the Results of Technical and Scientific Research', were supported with extensive reproductions of X-rays, micrographs of painting details, and photographs of paint cross-section samples.
