The Windmill

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rembrandt depicted the boundary between city and countryside. The print shows the so-called Little Stink Mill, an actual windmill that stood on the De Passeerde bulwark along the city wall that ran down the west side of Amsterdam. The mill was owned by the Leathermakers Guild and its nickname derived from its activity of softening tanned leather by treating it with cod liver oil. Rembrandt traced the mill and its surroundings in such detail that it seems likely he began the print on site and then finished it in the studio. Visible in the sky are diagonal striations that result from his having brushed acid over the surface of the printing plate for effect, and craquelure was more likely the result of an accident that occurred as the plate was being bitten by the acid.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art