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The sorrow of Jesus (and Rembrandt)

"Rembrandt and Jesus' at the Art Museum (2nd review)

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4 minute read
Detail from 'Supper at Emmaus' (1648): A god of vulnerability and loss.
Detail from 'Supper at Emmaus' (1648): A god of vulnerability and loss.
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age, stopped depicting Jesus in the traditional manner that portrayed him as an Aryan with blond hair in the 1640s after moving to a house on Saint Antoniesbreestraat in the Jewish neighborhood of Amsterdam. Always an innovator, he began to employ young, male Jews as models for Jesus— a totally revolutionary development but one long overdue. After all, Jesus, the Virgin Mary and disciples were Semites. Why would they have ever been portrayed otherwise?

"Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus" assembles more than 50 paintings, prints and drawings by Rembrandt at a turning point in his career. The show's appeal lies not so much in its religious subject as in the opportunity it provides us to see images from life that seem about to breathe, to speak and to directly relate to us.

The exhibition begins with an earlier Rembrandt painting, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, in which a blond Jesus expresses sympathy for the woman who is being condemned by the elders of the Temple Court. Here we experience the artist's emotional power even when he was still portraying Jesus according to the traditional form in the Lentulus letter (which described a blond Jesus according to someone who supposedly had seen him in life) and as recorded after the crucifixion in the Sudarium"“ both subsequently acknowledged fraudulent.

Those eyes, that mouth

A separate gallery displays unsigned small oil sketches by Rembrandt of young men posed as Jesus, plus two sketches by members of his studio, some of which were listed among Rembrandt's belongings when he filed for bankruptcy in 1657. These sensitive portraits of real people— not a symbol— challenged tradition by using live Jewish models and focusing on the eyes and mouth.

Supper at Emmaus (1648), from the Louvre in Paris, is a highlight of the exhibition, having been recently cleaned so as to reveal all the subtle tonalities of the faces and setting. It depicts the moment when Jesus, after the crucifixion, suddenly appears at the tavern table where two disciples are seated while a young waiter serves food. Stunned and incredulous, the two disciples seem about to flee or resist this strange vision of a presumed dead man who appears and gently breaks the braided loaf of challah. Meanwhile, Jesus conveys such vulnerability and sense of sorrow that it awakens a feeling of loss in all of us.

This sorrow was one of Rembrandt's favorite subjects, and he imbues it with a strong, emotional clarity. Through these painted individuals we sense Rembrandt's own sorrow and turmoil in his personal life as a widower with only one surviving child.

Raphael's influence

Rembrandt was known as a generous teacher, sharing his techniques with everyone in his studio and instructing his students to such a level that they became his commercial competitors. But he taught them little about his etchings and dry points, new developments of that era that became a steady source of income for him. One of his hundred variations of his famous etching, Christ Preaching: Bring Thy Little Children Unto Me (1649), widely known as The Hundred-Guilder Print for its unusually high price, was strongly influenced by Raphael's "School of Athens" in the Vatican in Rome.

Although Rembrandt never traveled outside the Netherlands, he was well informed about art developments and notable artists throughout Europe. Artists' copies and local art dealers kept him informed, he claimed.

An adjacent side gallery shows an informative film demonstrating etching and dry point techniques at Philadelphia's Fleisher Art Center. It gives a clear vision of these processes and shows the difference between the two processes.

This exhibition, jointly organized by the Louvre in Paris, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the first show since 1932 to bring to Philadelphia a major group of Rembrandt's drawings, prints and paintings. Although the Art Museum owns the largest collection of Dutch art in the U.S., this is a new star in its orbit. The themes might be Biblical but it's about humanity and real life.♦


To read another review by Andrew Mangravite, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
To read responses, click here.




What, When, Where

“Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus.†Through October 30, 2011 at Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and Benj. Franklin Parkway. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.

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