Rembrandt’s painting *The Scholar in His Study* is accompanied by the project *After Rembrandt*, which presents the works of eight contemporary artists in turn (Štefan Tóth, Jakub Špaňhel, Vladimír Véla, Alžběta Josefy, Zdeněk Trs, Tomáš němec, Tomáš Tichý, Michaela Maupicová), created as an artistic reflection on Rembrandt’s painting. The paintings are displayed in an exhibition in the Sternberg Palace opposite Rembrandt’s work.
The reception (or appropriation) of the old masters is a standard phenomenon in art, and many well-known galleries have projects combining older art with contemporary art. The National Gallery in Prague not only looks for parallels in various periods of art, but directly initiates the creation of original reflections by contemporary artists and visitors on Gallery projects. Its aim is to demonstrate to the public that older art remains a source of inspiration for the new generation of artists, that it has potential and meaning for today’s world, and that it is not just a matter of artefacts preserved on the walls of exhibition halls.
**Michaela Maupicová (1982)**
*"Since childhood, I have been fascinated by the geological moulding of the Earth’s surface at a given time and on a given scale. I thus work with phenomena such as the crystallization of a stone, a fractal of an ore vein, the ornament of a crystal lattice... In my work, I deal with structures that surround us, that we only feel – something that is going on in the shadow of human attention, but that under certain circumstances can alarm us, can make us focus our attention on it and sharpen our perception of the world around us. In this way, abstract paintings come to life based on specific phenomena. Here, Rembrandt has become the subject of my investigation."*
