Salomon Koninck
1609–1656 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age, Baroque
The story
Salomon Koninck spent his career in Rembrandt's shadow, and worked it beautifully. In Amsterdam in the 1630s and 1640s he specialized in old philosophers and hermits sitting in warm gloom, lit by a single fall of light in the manner Rembrandt had made famous a few streets away.
He came by it honestly. Born in Amsterdam in 1609, the son of a goldsmith, he trained under Pieter Lastman, the same teacher Rembrandt had, and moved in the circle around the dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh, copying Rembrandt's compositions closely.
The likeness could fool experts. His Philosopher with an Open Book in the Louvre was long catalogued as a Rembrandt and even hung as the companion to a genuine one, Rembrandt's Philosopher in Meditation. Koninck was buried in Amsterdam in August 1656.
