How does the book interpret Rembrandt's 1634 painting 'Portrait of Himself and Saskia'?
Explanation
This question focuses on the analysis of a specific work by Rembrandt, contrasting the common sentimental interpretation with the book's more critical, sociological reading.
Other questions
What fundamental analogy does the book propose for oil painting in its relationship to ownership and the act of seeing?
According to the text, the period of traditional oil painting, as an art form, is roughly set between which years?
What quote from Lévi-Strauss is used to describe an outstandingly original feature of the art of Western civilization?
How does the chapter define the difference between a 'masterpiece' and an 'average work' within the tradition of oil painting?
What is the special ability that the book claims distinguishes oil painting from any other form of painting?
In the analysis of Holbein's 'The Ambassadors', what is the significance of the distorted skull in the foreground?
How did oil painting celebrate wealth differently from earlier art traditions?
What is the main contradiction the book identifies in average religious paintings from the oil painting tradition, using Mary Magdalene as an example?
How is William Blake presented as an exceptional case in relation to the oil painting tradition?
What interpretation is given for the objects on the shelves in Holbein's 'The Ambassadors', such as the navigational instruments, globe, and hymn book?
What is the described stance of the two ambassadors in Holbein's painting towards the viewer?
The conflict in painted public portraits is described as the need to see the subject from close-to and from afar simultaneously. What is the suggested analogy for this way of seeing?
In the context of oil painting genres, how are paintings of livestock, such as the 'Lincolnshire Ox', interpreted?
What purpose did the highest category of oil painting, the history or mythological picture, serve for its spectator-owners?
What was the stated purpose of the 'genre' picture, or picture of 'low life'?
Which category of oil painting is identified as the one to which the book's main argument about property applies least?
From which genre of painting did the most significant innovations in the tradition of oil painting come, according to the text?
In the discussion of Gainsborough's 'Mr and Mrs Andrews', what does the author claim was one of the pleasures the portrait gave its subjects?
How does the author counter Professor Lawrence Gowing's argument that Mr and Mrs Andrews were engaged in the 'philosophic enjoyment of unperverted Nature'?
Instead of a 'framed window open on to the world,' what alternative model does the author propose for the European oil painting?
According to the text, why are exceptional artists like Rembrandt or Vermeer acclaimed as the tradition's supreme representatives, despite producing work diametrically opposed to its values?
What does the stereotype of 'the great artist' that emerged from the oil painting tradition entail?
In contrast to his earlier work, how is Rembrandt's later self-portrait described?
The chapter argues that oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. What does this mean?
What is the consequence of the huge number of oil paintings produced, in terms of the visitor's experience in an art museum?
What does the text claim is the defining characteristic of 'hack work' in the oil painting tradition?
What is the primary function of paintings of food, such as 'Still Life with a Lobster'?
What does the text say about the depiction of the sitter's face in formal portraits as the tradition continued?
The book claims the prestige and emptiness of mythological paintings were directly connected. Why was this?
What factor does the text identify as the cause for the 'stiff and rigid' appearance of the average painted public portrait?
Who is presented as the only exceptional 'genre' painter, whose work precludes sentimental moralizing?
What two reassuring things do pictures of the smiling poor, such as those by Hals, assert to the better-off viewer?
Why did the first pure landscapes painted in seventeenth-century Holland answer 'no direct social need,' according to the text?
Why does the author accuse the cultural history we are normally taught of 'disingenuousness' in its analysis of works like Gainsborough's 'Mr and Mrs Andrews'?
What accusation does the author anticipate from the 'Cultural Establishment' in response to the book's analysis?
What was the struggle of an exceptional painter who was dissatisfied with painting's limited role as a celebration of material property?
The end of the period of the traditional oil painting was marked by its displacement as the principal source of visual imagery by what?
What is the key difference, according to the chapter, between the way an 'average work' and an 'exceptional work' were produced in the oil painting tradition?
The tradition of oil painting still forms many of our cultural assumptions. What specific assumption does the text say it defines?
What does the text suggest about the symbolism of objects in a painting like 'Vanitas' by de Poorter, where a skull is included?
The text claims that in Holbein's 'The Ambassadors', every square inch of the surface appeals to what sense?
What conclusion does the author draw from the fact that exceptional artists like Turner or Goya had 'no followers but only superficial imitators'?
When did oil painting as an art form fully establish its own norms and way of seeing?
The relationship between art and market is identified as key to understanding the contrast between exceptional and average work. What historical development in the art market corresponds with the period of oil painting?
In the analysis of mythological paintings like Reynolds's 'Graces Decorating Hymen', how does the text describe the function of the 'classic guise'?
What does the final stage of development in the generalized portrait sitter's face, the 'mask which went with the costume,' lead to in the modern day?
Why must an exceptional painter, single-handed, 'contest the norms of the art that had formed him'?
What is the reason given for the failure of art history to come to terms with the relationship between outstanding and average works?
How did the tradition of oil painting supply archetypes for 'artistic genius'?