Etching, with touches of drypoint: 18,4 x 21,6 cm;
signed and dated lower right: ‘Rembrandt. | f 1641’
(a faint second date of 1641 appears above Rembrandt’s name)
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Notes
During his lifetime, Rembrandt’s extraordinary skills as a printmaker were the main source of his international fame. Unlike his oil paintings, prints travelled light and were relatively cheap. For this reason, they soon became very popular with collectors not only within but also beyond the borders of the Netherlands, and it also explains why they were affordable to collectors through the centuries.
Rembrandt scholar and curator Clifford S. Ackley has stated that this print ‘illustrates an episode of the Christian conversion from the ministry of the apostle Philip. The subject was painted several times by Rembrandt’s teacher Pieter Lastman and twice by Rembrandt himself at the very beginning of his career. It clearly appealed to the Dutch Protestant emphasis on the confession of faith and baptism. An additional appeal for artists such as Lastman and Rembrandt was the opportunity to indulge their imaginative skills in inventing exotic costumes, trappings, and paraphernalia [seen both in the splendid rider and the black attendant, holding the eunuch’s cloak.] Rembrandt takes full advantage of the opportunity, producing in this etching one of his most extravagant displays of ancient “oriental” splendor set in an invented oasis landscape’.
In some glosses of the story of the baptism, the dog wants to drink from the river as used for the baptism, and has been shooed away. Rembrandt’s introduction of dogs into holy scenes has been interpreted by some critics as healthy Dutch naturalism, and a dig at the solemnity of Italian counterparts where it would have been unthinkable. It also seems likely that Rembrandt was a dog-lover.
Literature
Bartsch 98; The New Hollstein Dutch (NHD) 186 Second state (of IV).
Plate in existence at Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
Provenance:
Condition
Outstanding, fine-lined and lively lifetime impression with fine plate tone. Before the added “+” in the lower left corner, which characterises the later prints. With a small margin around the platemark.