Leiden 1606 - 1669 Amsterdam

The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight, 1654

Etching with drypoint

205 x 161 mm. (sheet: 218 x 169 mm.); 8 x 6 3/8 inches (sheet: 8 1/2 x 6 5/8 in.)

Reference:

Bartsch/Hollstein 83

Hind 280

Biörklund/Barnard 54-G

Notes:

1. A superb, early impression with rich burr on the figure pulling down the sheet and on the figure supporting Christ’s body and elsewhere.

2. This scene relates to the description of Matthew (XXVII, 57-59):

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph who was himself a disciple of       Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over. Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it in clean linen and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed. But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb...

3. Rembrandt, in his interpretation of this scene, has infused it with that emotional intensity characteristic of his later etchings. The contents of this scene are transmitted not only with the pictoral elements involved, but also with the broad and powerful etched lines as well as with the dramatic profundity of the shadows created with drypoint. Within the deep shadows of the night as well as with the hopelessness of the situation, Rembrandt’s emotion is not expressed with his figures as much as it is expressed with the luminosity in which this lamp-lit scene is entrenched.