Voorstudie in gips voor Rembrandt-penning 1906

This is a plaster study for a Rembrandt medal made by Johan Melchior Faddegon. Look at that surface! I can feel the artist kneading the plaster, pressing and shaping the form, removing the excess around the edge. It’s as if Faddegon is in conversation with Rembrandt himself, feeling him out, trying to capture his likeness. I imagine him thinking about Rembrandt's use of light and shadow, his ability to capture the inner life of his subjects. The plaster is almost aggressively carved—you can imagine Faddegon wanting to get it right, to do justice to the master. You can see the hand of the artist here, a real sense of how it was made through the tactile nature of plaster. You can see the marks left by the tool. A bit like a drawing, in its immediacy. It's a conversation across time, an artist trying to get closer to another.