Rembrandt - Belshazzar's Feast: Edvard Grieg - Wedding Day at Troldhaugen; Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Throstle

Rembrandt van Rijn showed people realistically.  He saw people as made in the image of God but fallen.  The following is a quote about Rembrandt's work by Francis Schaeffer, “Rembrandt shows in all his work that he was a man of the Reformation, he neither idealized nature nor demeaned it. Moreover, Rembrandt’s Biblical base enabled him to excel in painting people with psychological depth. Man was great, but man was also cruel and broken, for he had revolted against God. Rembrandt’s painting was thus lofty, yet down to earth. There was no need for him to slip into the world of illusion, as did much of the baroque painting which sprang out of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Nature to this Dutch artist was a thing to be enjoyed as a creation of God.”
When Rembrandt chose models they were not necessarily physically attractive or beautiful because he was more interested in showing the inner life and emotion or a spiritual story. He did however use order in his compositions with pleasing arrangements and lovely color combinations.  As we've noted before there is a lot of contrast between light and dark.  There are many details to note here for picture study.  This comes from the Biblical story from Daniel of the writing on the wall at Belshazzar's Feast.  You can read the story in the Bible in Daniel 5 or watch a dramatized version put on by Moody Bible Institute on Youtube here: Moody Bible Institute Bible Story of Belshazzar's Feast.

A light happy piece of music by Edvard Grieg is Wedding Day at Troldhaugen is played by an orchestra here:  Edvard Grieg - Wedding Day at Troldhaugen  or here on piano:  Piano version of Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen

I hope you're finding lots of poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson that you like. Here are two links to some of them:  Ambleside Online Poems of Tennyson and Poetry Archive - Tennyson.   Here is another Spring poem by him:   


               The Throstle


"Summer is coming, summer is coming,
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, love again."
Yes, my wild little poet.
Sing the new year in under the blue,
Last year you sang it as gladly,
"New, new, new, new!"  Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?
"Love again, song again, nest again, young again,"
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.
"Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, my dear.
And all the winters are hidden.