""Investing" in art, the silliest of silly, gambling in its purest form." - MpVpRb (anonymous 2016)
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Rembrandt400

Title: “This Rembrandt better be good!”
The composition of Rembrandt400 (painted to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth) is based on Il Ridotto di Palazzo Dondolo a San Moisè*(The foyer) by Francesco Guardi in Venice’s Museo Ca’ Rezzonico. The artist has changed Guardi’s horizontal composition to vertical. Matthew Moss has, also, converted the Venetian artist’s rich claustrophobic closed-in foyer of this Venetian casino to the equally hot-house atmosphere of a contemporary high-profile Old Masters exhibition.

The gamblers and miscreants in the Guardi painting have been replaced by the overwhelming presence of security guards, controls and surveillance that dominate Rembrandt400. Concerns for the security of high-value art is now omnipresent in famous-name big profit-generating exhibitions. Similarly, Guardi’s beautiful people, and hangers-on shown on the Great Staircase of the gaming house, are illuminated with chandeliers running horizontally across the top quarter of the canvas. In Rembrandt400 they are replaced, instead, with security cameras. Matthew created the highlights of the cables securing the camera using fine pure liquid gold (known as shell gold) that he burnished so that it reflects slightly from the surface, a technique known to medieval illuminated manuscript painters, including the artist's distant ancestors, the creators of the Book of Kells in Dublin.
*The casino of Palazzo Dondolo was, in his last years, the home away from home to John Law a brilliant Scottish economist . His ante litteram theories on money brought about the economic collapse of Europe and in particular, France in 1720. He is buried in the central nave of the nearby church of San Moisè.

are available for book illustrations, annual reports, paper and packaging, giftware, related products. You can license them in the following format: Original transparencies in 6 x 6 cm. (2¼ in.) format, high-resolution RGB drum scans on DVD or efficient and quick E-Mail or FTP upload.