2019 marked the 350-year anniversary of the passing of Dutch Master Rembrandt. The year was officially declared ‘year of Rembrandt’ with celebrations and special expositions nation-wide, including the home of some of Rembrandts most famous paintings: The Rijksmuseum.

ING has been a main sponsor of The Rijksmuseum for over a decade and wanted to join the Rijksmuseum’s ‘year of Rembrandt’ celebrations. ING positions itself as an innovative bank that helps people and businesses move forward. It does that with smart banking solutions but also with their art and culture partnerships. ING believes that by making art and culture accessible to all, everyone can get new insights and be inspired to move forward.

Art generally revolves around conservation and is deemed exclusive. So, ING set out to create an idea, celebrating the ‘year of Rembrandt’, that would be accessible to all and underline ING’s innovative brand values.

Rembrandt is seen as the greatest Dutch Master of all time. A little-known fact is that, next to painting himself, Rembrandt was also devoted to teaching other artists such as Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol & Willem Drost. ING wondered if technology would allow Rembrandt to teach people to paint again today. And not just a chosen few, but everyone.

Together with Rembrandt experts, 17th century linguists, data-scientists and voice forensics specialists, ING analyzed the 4 key aspects that made Rembrandt the devoted teacher that he was. His painting technique, his personality, his manner of speech through letters he wrote and extensive research by Rembrandt biographers. And finally, his actual voice with the latest forensic and computational technology.

This technology and research came together in The Rembrandt Tutorials. A series of 6 tutorials bringing Rembrandt’s capacity to teach back to life for everyone to enjoy and learn from.

ING wanted to stay true to their mission to make art and culture accessible to everyone, so the idea had to have universal appeal and a low threshold. ING also believed that accessibility doesn’t just come from getting people to watch art. It wanted to give people a deeper insight into how and why art came to be. Painting lessons would be a perfect vehicle to do so. Especially because that would help people discover their painting talent, reflect and move forward.

Getting people to take painting lessons did feel like a big commitment. So, to further help accessibility, ING chose to use a universal low barrier format for the lessons: YouTube tutorials. ING was also aware that people wouldn’t take painting lessons from a bank. So, it had to come from the master himself. Raising the question: what if we’d gather all available data about Rembrandt to help bring him back to life as a painter?

To bring Rembrandt to life as a teacher in 6 tutorials, ING brought together a wide range of experts to analyze his painting and teaching style, personality, language and voice.

The Rembrandt curator at the Rijksmuseum dissected his unique way of painting to create the content for the tutorials. 17th Century linguists took the copy for the tutorials, and translated it back into the Dutch language of the Golden Age. A pronunciation specialist from Leiden University took Rembrandt’s tutorials from the written word to the spoken word, by recreating the exact accent and intonation of that period.

For his voice, ING worked with leading AI and voice forensics scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. Facial recognition software was used on his many self-portraits to create a 3D model. This data was used to reverse engineer Rembrandt’s voice box. Recreating what Rembrandt would have sounded like, 350 years after his death.

ING unveiled Rembrandt’s voice and the tutorials, together with all collaborating scientists and experts, at a press event at the Rijksmuseum. The unveiling sent waves through national and international media, resulting in over 180 publications including RTL, Volkskrant, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, VRT, Ad Age and Bild.

The extensive PR attention helped the awareness of the Rembrandt Tutorials under the audience NL18+ (N=1626) reach 28% with 10% affirming they had watched the tutorials. Awareness of the ING sponsorship of the Rijksmuseum hit 28% as well due to the Rembrandt Tutorials.

The Rembrandt Tutorials gathered over 4 million impressions on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter combined. And all YouTube content for the Rembrandt tutorials have a total amount of 1 million views and still counting.