The Master and the Mennonites
or "Did Anslo Make it?"

by Julia Kasdorf

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In early October 1995, Levi Miller posted this query on Mennolink, the electronic mail list server for Mennonites and their friends: "Did Anslo make it?" At his home in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, Levi was wondering whether any New Yorkers had seen the Rembrandt /Not Rembrandt exhibit and whether they had noticed if the show included the famous masterpiece depicting a Mennonite preacher and wife. Then in keeping with Mennolink's conversational tone, Levi ventured a few assertions about Rembrandt's theological and personal ties to the Waterlander Mennonites in Amsterdam. For more than a week, his posting evoked responses--often more enthusiastic than informational--on topics ranging from perceptible evidence of Anabaptist piety in Rembrandt's biblical scenes to speculations about tenuous Mennonite connections shared by artistic notables ranging from Brahms to Ohio organ manufacturers. After all that conjecture, Levi was none the wiser; it seems that no one had actually seen the New York exhibit. But the questions he stirred--about Rembrandt, Mennonites, and why we love to speculate about authenticity--seemed worth considering.

Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt
On October 10,1995, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt, a three-month exhibit exploring the problems of connoisseurship, the art historian's work of identifying the author of a painting. Questions concerning Rembrandt attributions are legion. Only seven of his letters and almost no records of his workshop survive. From early in his career, he attracted many students and imitators, and sometimes it is impossible to determine which paintings are copies and which are collaborative efforts. Moreover, his style, materials, and techniques varied throughout his lifetime, making it difficult to identify signature traits. In 1906, experts ascribed 558 paintings to Rembrandt, 606 in 1909, and 711 in 1921. Now there are believed to be only about 300 genuine Rembrandts, and the exact number may never be firm, despite official efforts of the Rembrandt Research Project, lavishly financed by the Dutch government since 1969 to authenticate all Rembrandt attributions in the world.

Although the Project employs documentary evidence, state-of-the-art technical analysis, and scholarly connoisseurship, these methods are never entirely conclusive, as the current exhibit demonstrated. While the Research Project has convinced the Metropolitan Museum that 21 of its Rembrandts are not real, the Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt show is seen by some as an attempt to demystify the authority of the Dutch group. The exhibit exposes the inexact nature of connoisseurship, revealing disagreements even among the museum staff members who curated the show -- Hubert von Sonnenburg, head of the Conservation Department, and Walter Liedtke, curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings, Carolyn Logan and Nadine Orenstein of the Department of Drawings and Prints, and Stephanie Dickey.

Another expression of the current emphasis on the epistemology, the show invites viewers to examine, not just Rembrandt, but the ways in which we know these pictures to be Rembrandts -- or not -- posing for inspection both the artworks and some of the evidence that connoisseurship considers. Included are all 42 paintings in the museum's collection attributed to Rembrandt -- 18 are still believed to be authentic -- as well as 30 drawings, 32 prints, and several paintings by artists influenced by Rembrandt.

Mennonite/Not Mennonite
Anslo did not make it into the Metropolitan Museum's exhibit. That painting -- portraying the wealthy cloth merchant and preacher Cornelis Claesz Anslo and his wife, Aeltje Schouten -- hangs in Berlin. A few etchings and a drawing of Anslo are scattered in collections in Europe and the United States. For Mennonites, these works have been emblems of Rembrandt's ties to Dutch Anabaptism. Prints made from the painting of Anslo and his wife began appearing in North American homes and church vestibules in the 1950s, when an association between the master and Mennonites was first popularly celebrated.

Lacking real evidence, 20th-century scholars cannot claim that Rembrandt (1606-1669) was ever a Mennonite, despite the often-quoted passage from the Italian art critic Filippo Baldinucci, who wrote concerning Rembrandt in 1686: "The artist professed in those days the religion of the Menists, which, though false too, is yet opposed to that of Calvin, inasmuch as they do not practice the rite of baptism before the age of thirty. They do not elect educated preachers, but employ for such posts men of humble condition as long as they are esteemed by them honorable and just people, and for the rest they live following their caprice."

Baldinucci's source of information was the Danish painter Bernhard Keihl (1624-1687), who worked in Rembrandt's workshop between 1642 and 1644.

This was a critical period in the great artist's career, following the death of his wife, when he painted his masterpiece, The Night Watch. It also coincides with his association with Anslo (that portrait was commissioned in 1641) and other Mennonite art students and patrons. From those years on, Rembrandt gradually sank into financial ruin, while turning increasingly to biblical subjects that would earn him little income. It is especially in these later paintings that some have recognized a quality suggestive of contact with Mennonite spirituality. However, it is primarily through the preacher Anslo that Mennonites have staked their association with Rembrandt.

In 1947 Ira D. Landis published an article in this Bulletin about the Anslo portrait, suggesting that Rembrandt's parents may have been Mennonites. In keeping with one traditional reading of the painting, Landis elaborately narrates the scene between a Mennonite widow seeking comfort from Anslo, her minister. His article ends with an interesting note on the painting's provenance as reported in Ueberland und Meer (Oct. 1894), a bound magazine found by Harry F. Staffer of Farmersville, Pa., and translated by Noah G. Good at Lancaster Mennonite School. According to the magazine, the Anslo painting was purchased by the Prussian government and exhibited for 90 years before it disappeared from view. In 1815, it turned up in the British Gallery and hung there until it was spirited off to Germany in the 1890's. Landis concludes with a touching expression of concern about whether Anslo would survive the destructions of the war, and notes that at least one reproduction of the painting hangs at Bluffton College in Ohio.

In 1952, Cornelius Krahn reported in Mennonite Life the findings of two art historians, Jakob Rosenberg and H.M. Rothermund, working independently on Rembrandt's relations with Waterlander Mennonites. Rothermund's article, "Rembrandt and the Mennonites," in the same issue asserts that Rembrandt may have had contact with Mennonites in his youth, and certainly affiliated with them after 1641. Both scholars claim that contact with Mennonites affected Rembrandt's religious paintings, and that his later works express beliefs specifically associated with them: humility, introspection, sobriety, and the treatment of such Anabaptist ordinances as the Lord's Supper, adult baptism, and foot washing. Krahn cautions his Mennonite readers to refrain from drawing hasty conclusions, however, arguing instead for an appreciation of the work.

In October 1956, to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth, Anslo and his Wife appeared on the cover of a special edition of Mennonite Life, published at Bethel College. The issue featured articles on Rembrandt by Irvin B. Horst, N. van der Zijpp, and John F. Schmidt. Their titles "Rembrandt Knew Mennonites," "Rembrandt van Rijn 1606-1956," and "Some Rembrandts in America" highlight the issue's intent: to establish the connection between Rembrandt and the Dutch Mennonites while educating American readers in an appreciation of the great artist. "We will be well served by articles on Rembrandt and Mennonites if they lead us on to the greater subject of his art," writes Horst at the beginning of his piece which traces Rembrandt's connections from boarding with a Mennonite family early in his career (1631-1635) to later friendships with Mennonite art students, poets, and patrons. Rembrandt may have depicted as many as 13 Mennonite men and women throughout his life, and Horst includes a catalog of suspected Mennonite subjects, including the calligrapher and schoolteacher Liven Willemsz van Coppenol, included in the current exhibit.

Thus questions about Rembrandt's formal religious affiliation seem to have been settled by mid-century, yet study of Mennonite influence in his work continues. In 1992 Austrian-born, Canadian Mennonite art historian Isle Friesen published an updated summary of Rembrandt's Mennonite ties, offering what she calls a "Mennonite interpretation" of communion and community in his works Simeon and the High Priest and Christ at Emmaus. Her paper appears in a collection of scholarly essays published by Rockway Mennonite Church in Ontario, devoted to the perennial problem of Anabaptist artists and intellectuals: the relation of individual to community. In From Martyr to Muppy, in a chapter devoted to "The Mennonite Image in Literature," Piet Visser notes a connection between economic advancement among Dutch Mennonites in the 17th century and their interest in the visual arts and literature. Artistic activities were regarded as worthy venues for the expression of faith and morality. Visser offers a summary of significant Mennonite contributions to Dutch Painting:

The strict old Flemish poet, Karel van Mander, was also a well-known painter in his day, managing an art school in Haarlem. Rombout Uylenburgh, a Waterlander from Amsterdam who worked mostly in Danzig was a brother of Hendrick Uylenburgh, a famous master at a painters' school and art collector.Rembrandt was among his apprentices and married his niece, Saskia, daughter of a Reformed mayor of Leeuwarden in Friesland. Jan de Bakker and Govert Flink, both talented Mennonites, were also trained in his school. The Waterlander preacher of Leeuwarden, Lambert Jacobsz, was well known as a painter and several other artists were engaged in etching, engraving, and illustrating books (70).

The most important work on the master and Mennonites is now being done by a non-Mennonite, Stephanie Dickey, who approaches the question without any stake in claiming Rembrandt's connections. In a recent telephone interview, she explained that her interest in Mennonite imagery of the 17th century emerged from the study of Rembrandt's portraiture and patronage. She sought to understand how the portraits would have been viewed by the people for whom they were made, and how objects in the etchings and paintings conveyed information about their subjects. For instance, the Anslo painting shows the man preaching near an open book. Would Mennonites have seen something special in this painting? Yes, Stephanie claimed in her paper, "She Who Has Ears to Hear: Rembrandt's Portrait of the Ideal Mennonite Marriage," delivered at The Quiet in the Land? conference at Millersville University in June 1995. Her interpretation of the painting, etchings, and a poem by Vondel that accompanied the image, suggest that Rembrandt understood and portrayed concepts central to a theological debate that Anslo was engaged in at the time. The painting expresses his beliefs about the "outer world" (as represented by the biblical text and preaching) and the spiritual "inner word" (as depicted by his wife's inspired attention). Rembrandt's choice to include both husband and wife in one portrait created a record of shared faith, in keeping with Mennonite values.

Prior to assuming her teaching position at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis this fall, Prof. Dickey assisted in the creation of the Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Although she had identified no Mennonite portraits in the show, she believes that one of the drawings, Beheading of the Prisoners, may depict a multiple execution of 16th century Anabaptist martyrs in Amsterdam. Recently demoted from a Rembrandt attribution to School of Rembrandt, the image is related to a genuine Rembrandt drawing in the British Museum. In the exhibit's catalog and a forthcoming article, she argues that in the 1640's, Rembrandt's interest in such scenes may have been fueled by his friendship with Anslo, who had close ties with the editor of an Anabaptist martyrology that preceded Martyrs Mirror. It may even be that the study anticipated a martyr work planned for a Mennonite audience, although the etching Beheading of John the Baptist is the only finished work related to the drawing.

Did We Make it?
According to a New York Times report, there was a point just after the turn of the century when "every painting not nailed down was labeled a Rembrandt, apparently on the theory that if several hundred Rembrandts were a good thing, a few hundred more would be even better." Reading this, I couldn't help but think of the irresistible urge to mark Rembrandt and his subjects with the Mennonite label -- although an illegitimate child in 1654 would have excluded him from even the liberal Waterlander fellowship, as it tested his membership in the Dutch Reformed church and resulted in the excommunication of his house-keeper-mistress, Hendridkje Stoffels.

Nevertheless, the impulse to identify Rembrandt with Mennonites -- and for Mennonites to identify with him -- persists. It is difficult to tell whether there is more to this urge than the celebrity boasts that are typical of minority groups eager to achieve worldly status. The fact is that Rembrandt did share something meaningful with Anslo and the Waterlander fellowship. According to Prof. Dickey, Mennonites of that time and place were more open to visual artists than their Dutch Reformed Calvinist contemporaries -- and there was no conflict for a Mennonite preacher who was also a painter.

So perhaps the real question is not "Did Anslo make it?" but "Did we make it?" Can American Mennonites, despite traditional scruples about culture and the arts, claim some part in the work of this great master? If only by remote association, are we and Rembrandt somehow kin? Perhaps, but only if we recognize in his work something that reaches the soul, forgetting for that instant the sectarian habits of mind which -- like the habits of connoisseurship -- seek to authenticate, sorting the Mennonite from not.

--Poet Julia Kasdorf is assistant professor of writing at Messiah College, Grantham, PA.

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Mennonite Historical Bulletin, January, 1996