Question

2. Explain who Valentiner was and why he found collecting Rembrandt pieces to be controversial.

Answer 1

Wilhelm Valentiner was born at Karlsruhe (Baden), and studied at Heidelberg under Henry Thode, and in the Netherlands with Cornelis Hofstede de Groot and with Abraham Bredius, whose assistant he was at the Gallery of The Hague.

In 1905 he was called to Berlin by William Bode, under whom he worked at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. In 1906 he published his dissertation on Rembrandt that he started in 1904: Rembrandt auf der Lateinschule.

Answer 2

Wilhelm Valentiner was an art critic and art historian who specialized in Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci. He was born in Germany and completed most of his art training in Europe. Afterwards, he moved to the United States to become a curator at the Met Museum in New York City. He also served as the director of the Detroit Art Museum.

He was an important scholar on Rembrandt, and he published his dissertation on the artist in 1906 (Rembrandt auf der Lateinschule). However, he also found collecting his pieces to be controversial. This was because he believed many of the pieces that were claimed to be by Rembrandt were actually not done by the artist.