Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer

While visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I came upon Rembrandt’s painting Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer, dated 1653. It is one of the most impressive works of art I have ever seen live, up close. It is captivating, engaging, and thought provoking in a profound way. It clearly upholds its reputation as one of the world’s great works of art.

Rembrandt van Rijn (Leiden 1606- Amsterdam 1669) was a painter, printmaker, and art collector-dealer in the Dutch Republic. The Dutch Republic brought in great wealth through its worldwide trade in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries. This funded the Dutch Golden Age with such artists as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Claesz, Bosschaert, Heist, Velde, Elder, and others.

Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

The Aristotle painting is one of Rembrandt’s most celebrated works, considered a masterpiece. It is his most conceptually powerful work. For centuries art critics have debated the multiple themes and various levels of understanding in the painting that make this work so special. The work is paradoxical and metaphorical with varied interpretations. Rembrandt provokes the audience to think beyond their initial visual impressions to ‘see’ a higher thought process. Like all great art it ‘uplifts’ our mind and spirit to seek a higher truth and beauty.

On the descriptive level of the Aristotle painting, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) has his arm on the bust statue of the Greek poet Homer (8^th Century BC) who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey and who Aristotle venerated. They are in a library or study with books on the wall. Around Aristotle’s neck he wears a gold chain of honor with a medallion of Alexander the Great that presumably had awarded Aristotle the gold chain. Significantly, Rembrandt painted the gold chain to be as prominent as the bust of Homer in the painting. Rembrandt’s Aristotle is not portrayed as a typical modest and contemplative philosopher but rather as a worldly bearded man of wealth with gold and expensive hat, apron, cloak, gown, and ring.

Homer’s Blindness

Rembrandt often turned to the subject of blindness. His message is that one does not need visual capability to discern truth (Wallace). In Rembrandt’s painting Homer in 1663, the poet’s sightless eyes seem lifeless, his hands are groping aimlessly. The painting is a poignant representation of blindness. In the Aristotle painting, Homer, though blind, is gifted with a vision and insight, implying that truth and reality are not confined to the sense of sight but in the creative intuition of the mind.

According to Bonnie James, “It is Aristotle who appears blind. While Homer, who is sightless, “sees” with his mind, his head is bathed in light.” The bust of Homer is radiating light from the cerebral area of the brain and illuminating the philosopher’ arm. It is likely that Rembrandt is implying that the ‘vision and insight’ of Homer is drawing Aristotle to contemplate a higher invisible power.

Homer Dictating His Verses, 1663, Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague. The painting has been partly damaged by fire.

Aristotle’s Contemplation

In the painting, Aristotle is not looking directly at the bust of Homer, he is looking outside the painting’s frame, suggesting that he may not even be contemplating Homer or poetry or blindness. The painting does not give the answer and thus creates an ambiguousness which raises the question of a deeper meaning in the viewer’s mind.

His face shows melancholy, a technique used by Rembrandt and other artists and poets to evoke the viewer into an emotional mood susceptible to the aesthetic effect (beauty) and to transcend thinking to a higher cognitive level. The use of melancholy suggests what was expressed by Aristotle in his Poetics, “All those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or the arts are clearly melancholy.” Ironically, melancholy is a source of sadness but is also a source of joy and makes us nobler – contemplation to see the meaning of life.

A still deeper meaning can be found in Aristotle’s contemplation, in its sense of poetic dialogue. It is clear that Rembrandt did not intend this work to be merely understood on the level of visual perception. It is to be viewed both poetically and metaphorically, that through the images of objects arrayed in such a way that one can transcend from the visual with one’s eyes to imagine or contemplate with one’s mind.

Rembrandt Self Portrait, 1659, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The Gold Chain

Rembrandt and the Dutch masters were fully aware of Renaissance humanism and the differing philosophical views of Plato and Aristotle (James). In Rembrandt’s portrayal, Aristotle is symbolically bounded by the weight of a materialistic gold chain which is clearly intended to be consistent with the philosopher’s perspective. He is bound by the material realm of the senses. According to Bonnie James, “Rembrandt tells us to pity the poor philosopher. All his fame, his heavy gold chain, his splendid garments, will never bring him closer to the Truth.”

Rembrandt is giving us an informed look at Greek philosophy. Aristotle and Plato are the most significant philosophers in history. They have shaped Western civilization, politics, art, and science. The Greeks were fascinated with the notion of a higher universal force that forms and orders the universe, Hylozoic Monism (Heracleitus, Pythagoras, Anaximander, Thales, Anaximenes, Anazagoras, others).

Aristotle disagreed with the views of his teacher Plato. Aristotle places ‘true reality’ in the material world of the here and now, physical objective reality. He claims that humans obtain knowledge and perception through the senses, not from a higher power. He rejects the Platonic concept of higher ordered universal principles separate from material reality.

The contrary school of thought in Western civilization is Plato’s notion that there is a higher reality, higher ordered universal principles (Forms, Ideas, Hypothesis of the Higher Hypothesis) that drive and shape the universe and exist within our mind and soul.

Rembrandt poses the viewer a challenge – are we ‘blind’ to this Divine light within us or can we ‘see’ the sublime beyond our material senses. The subject of the painting is not Aristotle nor Plato nor Homer, rather the subject at hand is the creative human mind.

References

Rembrandt

• Aristotle Contemplating the Bust o Homer, Theodore Rousseau, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1962.
• Rembrandt’ Aristotle, Sashia Beranet, Smart History, 2016.
• Rembrandt’s Aristotle, Julius Held, Princeton, 1969.
• Rembrandt’s Eyes, Simon Shama, Knopf, New York, 1999.
• Rembrandt’s Journey, Clifford Ackely, MFA Publications, 2003.
• Rembrandt, Life and Work, Jakob Rosenberg, Phaidon, London, 1964.
• Rembrandt’s Thirty Years War, Bonnie James, EIR, 2007.
• The World of Rembrandt, Robert Wallace, Time-Life, NY, 1968.

Aristotle and Plato

• Greek Philosophy, John Burnett, Macmillan, London, 1924.
• Greek Philosophy, Georg W.F. Hegel, 1840.
• Greek and Roman Philosophy, Frederick Copleston, Doubleday, New York, 1946.
• A History of Greek Philosophy, Eduard Zeller, 1881.
• A History of Philosophy, Wilhelm Windelband, 1901.