Rembrandt – The first XLA Champion?

When you think of experience management and XLAs, do you immediately think of Rembrandt van Rijn? Rembrandt, the prolific 17th-century painter, probably not?

While Rembrandt had never heard of XLAs, he certainly understood experience management. And recent scientific discoveries indicate he also understood the concept of an XLA-stack. Let's look at Rembrandt's work through the experience management lens.

All good experience management starts with the staged experience.

Before Rembrandt, portraits were serious business. They were the domain of the rich, painted to impress.

Rembrandt created a new staged experience, met with horror by Baroque masters. Rembrandt wanted art to be an experience for everyone. "I seek to achieve through my art:?the greatest and most natural movement." While wealthy patrons funded him, Rembrandt also painted regular people with all their accurate and unattractive features. Cooks, beggars, family members. He even used ordinary people in his biblical depictions.

Rembrandt's staged experience

Rembrandt created his staged experience in several innovative ways.

Firstly, Rembrandt painted the subjects looking at you/through you. Rembrandt used light and shade in the so-called Rembrandt triangle to bring the viewer into the painting. Secondly, he adapted the theatrical light and shadow derived from Caravaggio, called chiaroscuro. This mastery of light and texture emphasized emotional depth. Thirdly, he gave his paintings a 3D effect through an impasto technique that staples different compositions of paint onto each other so that it sticks out from the canvas.

In our Experience management theory, a staged experience becomes a scalable defined experience through the application of an XLA. The XLA' guarantees' the defined experience. An XLA is about sentiment but rests on a technical, empirical base, the SLA.

So what was Rembrandt's artistic SLA?

We found out in 2019. Scientists discovered that Rembrandt had a specific formula for his paintings that created the effect we enjoy so much: A lead carbonate mineral called plumbonacrite, Pb5(CO3)3O(OH).

Rembrandt was very particular in his application of this compound. This discovery is extraordinary because this rare compound has only been identified in works of art from the 20th century and in one painting by?Vincent van Gogh.

Research indicates that Rembrandt intentionally added the compound as lead oxide or litharge to his oils to make the paste-like paint. The scientists reflect, "Our research shows that its presence is not accidental or due to contamination, but the result of an intended synthesis."?

Rembrandt's XLA Stack.

A staged experience where everyday people will enjoy a painting that embodies the greatest and most natural movement.

His XLA drew people into the painting using contrasting light and dark and 3D effects.

Three SLAs: The Rembrandt Triangle, Chiaroscuro lighting, and Impasto

Underpinning technology: plumbonacrite

Rembrandt's XLA enabled him to create a scalable workshop of young talented artists that produced over 600 paintings, nearly 400 etchings, and 2,000 drawings. Some experts believe that only 300 are actually from Rembrandt himself.

His workshop also brought forth many talented painters who became legends of the Dutch Golden Age.

Rembrandt! Arguably the first XLA Champion.