Talk:Rembrandt

This is the discussion/talk page for: Rembrandt.

Created

The page "Rembrandt" was created on 13 June 2006 by one-time IP user 81.205.216.19, explaining the artist Rembrandt in 7 languages and showing an uncategorized image. On November 1-2, 2008, the page was vastly expanded by user Vincent Steenberg (in a series of large edits) to show 235 images, listing the paintings & drawings in order by year. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Split paintings into year-subsections

9-April-2009: The page has become large enough (30kb) to edit-hang in old browsers, unless edited by subsections. I have split the paintings section into 3 year-subsections, labeled: 1625-1635, 1636-1655 & 1656-1669. The subsection titles are the year-digits only, which are the same in many languages, and are accessible for Japanese & Chinese, due to the widespread use of digital calculators & knowledge of the Gregorian calendar. (Arabic might require using the different Arabian digit symbols.) An example of an obsolete browser that hangs, during page-edit, is Windows 98 with MSIE 6.0. Although officially obsolete, Windows 98 MSIE 6.0 can still display the page and edit subsections, thus avoiding an access-barrier in regions, across the world, using such "old" technology. Fortunately, most automobiles do not have planned obsolesence computers that die after 9 years, but it might be difficult to explain, in countries hundreds of years old, why 9 years means "obsolete" to some corporate mentalities. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• The year-subsections are short enough to allow quick editing with the Windows 98 MSIE 6.0 browser (without hanging during page-edit). That solution allows a large page to jointly display (or search) many of Rembrandt's works, yet also allow editing with limited-technology browsers which would hang/freeze on gallery sections containing the full 30kb. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Enlarged/converted some to image-tables

9-April-2009: I have enlarged some paintings, in 2 rows, by converting them from gallery-tags into wikitables with 4 larger images. Specifically, the paintings titled "The Anatomy Lesson" and "Staalmeesters" are among the 8 enlarged paintings. The customized coding to typeset such enlarged paintings can be very time-consuming for new users, so I don't recommend it for all images. A typical image-table could be coded as follows:

{| width=570px cellspacing=2 cellpadding=9 <!--
   --> style="border: 1px solid darkgray; margin-left:0.2em"
|- valign=top style="font-size:87%"
|[[Image:Rembrandt Abduction of Europa.jpg|140px]]<!--
 --><br>{{en|''The Abduction of Europa''.}} 1632.
|[[Image:Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 123.jpg|120px]]<!--
 --><br>{{de|''Raub der [[Proserpina]]''.}} ± 1632.
|[[Image:The Anatomy Lesson.jpg|190px]]<br><!--
 -->{{nl|''De anatomieles van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp''. 1632.}}
|[[Image:Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 038.jpg|139px]]<!--
 --><br>{{de|''Der Philosoph''.}} 1633.
|}

The result, of the above markup coding, appears as follows:

English: The Abduction of Europa. 1632.

Deutsch: Raub der Proserpina. ± 1632.

Nederlands: De anatomieles van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. 1632.

Deutsch: Der Philosoph. 1633.

The style parameter "margin-left:0.2em" indents the table, slightly, to align with nearby image-gallery boxes. To match the width of a gallery section, images might need to be sized in 1-pixel increments (such as 139px, rather than 135px or 140px).

The gallery-sections present an artistic style that shrinks all images into boxes sized 120x120px, surrounded by copious whitespace frames. However, image-tables can be formatted with little, or no, whitespace framing, so if images are enlarged too much, there can be a severe artistic clash with the tiny gallery images. If all images were converted to image-tables, they could be sized perhaps another 30% larger, but it is very time-consuming beyond 20-40 images, and would be especially tedious for over 230 images, plus making the page larger for limited browsers. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

ok, Wikid77. This indeed looks much better. However, I do have a question. Did you choose the thumbnail width yourself, or did you use some sort of formula to reflect the proportion of the actual size of each painting. Also, when you think that this page has become too large you could also create sub-pages such as Drawings by Rembrandt and/or Prints by Rembrandt, leaving this page only for his paintings (and memorials, etc.). Regards, Vincent Steenberg (talk) 08:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• The image widths are based on rule-of-thumb estimates, such as magnifying the wide, landscape sizes by 1.6x so that 120px pixels becomes 192px (roughly); tall/thin images are not widened as much. Then, hand-adjust the widths by 1-pixel increments to align the images-table width under the gallery-section width. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

secondly, for your information, I deliberately chose the portrait by Jan Lievens as portrait-picture of this page so that there's no overlap between portrait and work. I'm not sure about having 2 portrait images, so i would suggest to stick to the one by Lievens. Regards, Vincent Steenberg (talk) 08:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Consider section: Comparative portraits

For neutral point-of-view (NPOV), there should be multiple portraits made during the same year(s). Compare, for age 22, the Lievens portrait against the self-portrait, noting the lighting of the hair. The Rembrandt (of Rembrandt) seems like a more realistic, younger view of age 22, so I think those portraits should be shown together. However, I realize the potential confusion, because Rembrandt is known for the many self-portraits. We might need to have a section of "Comparative portraits", with explanatory text in that section, displayed by Template:autotranslate.

1911.

Trying to convey all meaning in a one-word title (Painter/Maler) is too limiting. Rembrandt would be a good precedent to display an autotranslate-paragraph explaining the "Comparative portraits" section that would show other views of the person in similar years. That paragraph could be broadly worded to allow showing multiple same-year photos of more recent people. For example, for Albert Einstein, showing just the "gray-haired professor" photos would be totally unrealistic for his youth, when he became famous by year 1911 (with Nobel Prize in 1921). Similarly, showing only black-&-white photos of World War II is a POV-bias, acting as though the world had no colors in 1938-1945. That's why I put both 1628-portraits of Rembrandt at the top. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I see. I guess you then want to focuss on Rembrandt as a person, rather than Rembrandt as a painter. I basically set up this page as an attempt to a catalogue of his (whole) oeuvre. In other words a chronological list of works. Focussing on "what he looked like over the years" might make things more complicated. But I'm mot an exclusivist. What you could do is create a page entitled Portraits of Rembrandt. Maybe that would work.

Your table-system works great btw. I made a little test using it on my Notepad. I modified it a bit by employing 2 rows, one for images, one for texts. Regards, Vincent Steenberg (talk) 10:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, I agree, a page named "Portraits of Rembrandt" would probably be a better approach, allowing for more diversity of images, without cluttering the "Rembrandt" page of his own artwork. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Commons galleries back to 3 images per row

09-April-2009: The gallery sections, today, are displaying as 3 images per row (rather than 4 images-per-row as in prior weeks). I have re-structured the image-tables as 3-images wide to better align with the surrounding gallery-sections. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

possible solution

I might have a solution for the long and sometimes unattractive caption-sections:
1. if possible use shortended titles. If you're not a fan of altered titles use [...] to indicate something is missing.
2. Increase the widths of the gallery images. Normally they are 120px wide. You can increase them to any size you want. Like that you avoid using complicated wikicode.

I know this is not in line with what I said earlier. And even though tables look very attractive, they do cause some problems. One of them is that you have to create a new table for each row, which takes up a lot of space. Secondly it's less inviting for people who have valuable information on Rembrandt, but are not that familiar with wikicode. So I think that increasing the thumbnail widths to whatever size works best is an easy and yet effective solution, which also makes it easier to maintain this page. Regards, Vincent Steenberg (talk) 22:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Example using 140px widths

• 
  Deutsch: Raub der Proserpina.

  ± 1632.
• 
  Deutsch: Anatomie des Dr. Tulp.

  English: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

  Español: La lección de anatomía del doctor Nicolaes Tulp.

  Français : La Leçon d'anatomie du docteur Tulp.

  Nederlands: De anatomische les van dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

  1632.
• 
  Deutsch: Der Philosoph.

  English: Scholar in Meditation.

  1633.

Example using 160px widths

• 
  Deutsch: Raub der Proserpina.

  ± 1632.
• 
  Deutsch: Anatomie des Dr. Tulp.

  English: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

  Español: La lección de anatomía del doctor Nicolaes Tulp.

  Français : La Leçon d'anatomie du docteur Tulp.

  Nederlands: De anatomische les van dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

  1632.
• 
  Deutsch: Der Philosoph.

  English: Scholar in Meditation.

  1633.

chronology

Also this list is meant to show all the works in chronological order, as far at that's possible. Arranging images according to their size and the length of their title crosses this out in a way. - Vincent Steenberg (talk) 18:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)