(I) Upper left: Nebuchadnezzar’s Image. Clothed only about the loins; there is a band or fillet about the head, and a short cloak hangs behind. The stone which breaks the legs of the image (the feet are seen falling to the left) has been cast from a roughly shaped rock. The stone is near part of a globe; illustrating the text “And the stone that broke the image became a great mountain, and filed the whole earth” (Daniel 2. 35). The brow is inscribed “Babel,” the right and left arms “Persae” and “Medi,” the waist “Graeci,” the legs “Romani” and “Mahometani.” These names only appear in the fifth “state” of the etching. There’s a proof of the fourth “state” in Paris, which bears the names written in Rembrandt’s own hand.
(II) Upper right: Vision of Ezekiel. The lower part, in the foreground, shows the four creatures of the chariot; above is a “glory,” amid the rays of which is seen the Almighty, surrounded by adoring angels.
(III) Lower left: Jacob’s Ladder. The patriarch, bearded, lies half-way up the ladder, tended by an angel, others are bending down in gaze, while one figure is seen mounting the rungs immediately above.
(IV) Lower right: Combat of David and Goliath. The most spirited drawing of all; in a scene overhung by rocks with warriors looking on, the giant grasps his lance in his left hand and with shield advanced on his right arm is charging David, who has his sling in action over his right shoulder.
The Museum, as already implied, possesses proof of the etchings in various “states”—the artist touched and retouched them, until they assumed the state reproduced by the present writer in 1906, in commemoration of the tercentenary of Rembrandt’s birth. The etchings are beautiful tokens of sympathy between the Rabbi and the painter. The various “states” show, as Mr. I. Solomons has suggested, that Rembrandt took unremitting pains to obtain Menasseh’s approval of his work.
Yet he failed to win this approval. It is pretty certain that the etchings were never used. Mr. Fairfax Murray possessed the Piedra Gloriosa with the etchings, and has now presented the volume to the University Library, Cambridge; another copy is to be seen in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, a copy formerly owned by M. Dutuit of Rouen. But Mr. Solomons seems right in asserting that “the original etchings in the copies of Mr. Murray and M. Dutuit were no doubt inserted after by admirers of Rembrandt’s work, but certainly not with the knowledge and sanction of Menasseh.” Why not? The etchings are good work; they really illustrate their subject, and must have added to the commercial, as well as to the artistic value of Menasseh’s work.
The most curious fact is that, though Rembrandt’s etchings were never used, a set of copper-plate engravings, based, as Mr. Solomons guesses, by the Jewish engraver Salom Italia on Rembrandt but not identical with his work, is found in some copies of Menasseh’s book—copies possessed by Mr. Solomons, M. Didot, and the Levy Collection in Hamburg. These engravings are laterally inverted, the right of Rembrandt’s etchings becomes the left of Salom Italia’s engravings. There are other differences in detail, all calculated to render the pictures more fitted for book illustration, but of all the changes only one is of consequence, and it was Mr. Solomons who detected the real significance of the change.
The change referred to gives the clue to the whole mystery. On comparing the two versions of the Vision of Ezekiel a striking variation is discernible. The figure of the Almighty has been suppressed! Here was the fatal defect in Rembrandt’s work. Menasseh could not possibly use a drawing in which the Deity is represented; he was not the one to repeat the inadvertence of the artist of the Sarajevo Haggadah. Possibly he only detected the fault at the last hour. But a fatality clung to the second set of illustrations also. Several copies of the Piedra Gloriosa are extant without any pictures at all.
LANCELOT ADDISON ON THE BARBARY JEWS
“Justice is done to the private virtues of the Jews of Barbary.” So Mr. Francis Espinasse remarks in his biography of Lancelot Addison. It is an accurate comment. Lancelot, the father of the more famous Joseph Addison—who himself wrote so amiably of the Jews a generation later—spent several years in Africa as English chaplain. Born in 1632, he showed an independent mind at Oxford. He roughly handled some of the University Puritans in 1658, and was promptly compelled to recant his speech on his knees in open Convocation. Tangier came into the possession of Charles II in 1662. Lancelot Addison had officiated in Dunkirk for the previous three years; but when that port was given up to the French, Addison was transferred to Morocco.