Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

The use of the spoken word in this film further underscores this
competition between word and image. While the film and the screenplay
throughout seem to value the verbal over the visual, representing Rembrandt as
effective public speaker with mesmerizing impact upon his audience, his art
works are hardly shown or described. In this regard, the film seems to give
precedence to the verbal over the visual. However, the visual ekphrases of
Rembrandt’s self portraits challenge this interpretation just like the visual
ekphrasis of the Self portrait as Zeuxis challenges and subverts its verbalization
by “Rembrandt” through the Solomon quotes. Throughout the film, then Korda
sets verbal and visual elements against each other, using ekphrasis to emphasize
its own status as hybrid, collaborative medium, as neither purely visual nor
verbal, nor a mixture of the two, but as independent art form in its own right.
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