Notes

This etching is part of a series of scenes from the Passion of Christ that Rembrandt created around 1654. Here, he diverged from traditional representations of the Descent from the Cross by focusing on the silent activity of taking down and burying Christ’s body. Only the bottom portion of the cross is visible on the left, and Christ’s head is in partial shadow. The figures that carry him and the hand that reaches up from the darkness to support his head are depicted in bright light.

Comparing this depiction with the “Descent from the Cross” from 1633 shows how virtuoso Rembrandt handled his creative means. The events are concentrated in a group of helpers, who are shown in the upper left half of the picture. Slowly and deliberately they lower the dead Christ from the cross. The blackness of the sheet increases emotional expression. This blackness is not created by the drypoint reworking, but by superimposed etched hatching.