Kostverloren Castle in Decay (c. 1652): Artwork and History

Kostverloren Castle in Decay (c. 1652) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Rembrandt van Rijn Dutch, 1606-1669.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Rembrandt and his contemporaries shared a fascination with the Kostverloren estate, in part because of the successive misfortunes that its owners seemed to endure. Already by Rembrandt’s time it had taken on its name, which translates as “lost expenses” or, more colloquially, “money pit.” The site faced another setback when much of the castle was destroyed in a fire. After this damage—and before its eventual repair—Rembrandt entered the grounds of the castle and recorded its diminished state. His emphasis on decay is made clear by the felled tree in foreground; its strident horizontality sets off the faded majesty of the castle’s once-grand structures.

Object facts

• Title: Kostverloren Castle in Decay
• Date: c. 1652
• Artist attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn Dutch, 1606-1669
• Place of origin: Holland
• Medium: Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with touches of opaque white watercolor, on cream laid paper
• Dimensions: 10.9 × 17.5 cm (4 5/16 × 6 15/16 in.)
• Type: Drawing and Watercolor
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1961.49

Collection credit

Clarence Buckingham Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.