Rembrandt's Mark is a fascinating and Janus-like publication. Written to accompany an exhibition held in the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, in 2019, the title choice was “as laconic as it is suggestive. It is about the hand in the work since it is in the mark . . . that the artwork ultimately demonstrates its quality,” as Marion Ackermann, director general of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen states in the foreword (6). Specifically, Rembrandt's mark in this instance refers to his drawn and etched lines, and is seen as having had “a great effect on other artists and can be traced into the modern and contemporary eras” (6). While the investigation of Rembrandt's importance for later artists is well established in scholarship on the artist, including previous exhibition catalogues, the emphasis on bringing this relationship up to the very present is novel and represents the forward-looking aspect of this endeavor. On the other hand, in several essays the catalogue authors delve deeply into Rembrandt's engagement with earlier artists, particularly Raphael's work as known to the Dutch artist in graphic reproductions. The catalogue looks firmly backward in time as well. Throughout the text, bolder claims are made than are often found in Rembrandt publications. This is in keeping with the authors’ desire to make the artist relevant for contemporary audiences, and in many ways is appropriate for an artist who was in his own time a highly innovative practitioner of graphic processes.

The introduction to the subject of Rembrandt's mark by Stephanie Buck, director of the Kupferstich-Kabinett, and a technical discussion on the materials of Rembrandt's drawings by Mailena Mallach and Simon Olaf, with Kate Edmonson, closely reflect the exhibition's theme. Two others are a bit idiosyncratic. Jürgen Müller, professor at the Technische Universität, Dresden, provided an in-depth study of Rembrandt's Hundred-Guilder Print, and he and Buck jointly wrote an essay on Rembrandt's indebtedness to Raphael. While both fascinating studies, these seem less about the mark and more about forwarding the signal importance of Italian Renaissance art, and especially Raphael, for Rembrandt's graphic art. This somewhat revisionist argument occasionally conflicts with the catalogue proper, where the significance of Northern Renaissance printmaking for Rembrandt is equally (and correctly) stressed. Nonetheless, the fruitful collaboration of Buck and Müller, two major scholars of the graphic arts, is one of the highlights of the catalogue.

An international group of specialists provided the catalogue entries. These entries are arranged thematically, around topics of subject matter (self-portraiture, Rembrandt's image of and with his wife Saskia), Rembrandt's own learning process and role as a teacher, and about technique itself (the use of light and shade, approaches to etching and drawing). It is in these entries with their introductory comments that a range of other artists, from Rembrandt's own seventeenth-century students to artists active from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries, are introduced. Intriguing connections are made in them between Rembrandt and those he has inspired. For this reader, the entries on the twentieth-century artists Käthe Kollwitz and Marlene Dumas are among the most thought provoking, given that attention to women artists and their relationship to Rembrandt as an artistic predecessor has rarely been investigated.

As another nod to contemporary art, the layout of the catalogue includes bold, full-page reproductions of details from prints and drawings by Rembrandt and some of the other artists discussed in it. These are graphically striking, especially when found at the start of the catalogue, but it is distracting that these images are not identified until page 278. The reader is often challenged when reading this catalogue to flip back and forth between text and images reproduced pages away. It is rewarding work, however, given the high quality of reproduction and the welcome inclusion of images of all the drawings in the Kupferstich-Kabinett attributed to Rembrandt (and two landscape drawings that are less firmly accepted into the drawn oeuvre).

It is a lofty goal to produce an exhibition catalogue that speaks to a variety of audiences, including scholars and the general public. This ambitious catalogue succeeds in being informative, provocative, and engaging throughout.