[The Hague
THE ANATOMY LESSON
(1632)
[Cassel
PORTRAIT OF JAN HERMAN KRUL
(1633)
There are thirteen other signed portraits of that year, including one of "Jan Herman Krul," at Cassel [No. 213], two of "Saskia"—one at Dresden [No. 1556]; one, called however, "Lysbeth van Rijn," which belonged to the late Baroness Hirsch-Gereuth—and two of himself, one, the oval portrait in the Louvre [No. 412], and the other in the collection of M. Warneck at Paris. Out of these twelve signatures, only one is the monogram R.H.L., the other eleven being signed with the full name, and from only one of these, "A Head of a Girl," in the collection of Prince Jousoupoff, is the d missing.
Three subject-pictures also belong to that year, in all probability; "An Entombment," in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow; a small picture described as "Petitioners to a Biblical Prince," belonging to M. Léon Bonnat of Paris; and "A Philosopher in Meditation" [No. 2541], in the Louvre. The last, indeed, though undated, may almost certainly be attributed to that year, since its companion, another "Philosopher in Meditation," also in the Louvre [No. 2540], is signed R. van Rijn, 1631. But the great event of the year must have been the patronage which came to him from Prince Frederick-Henry, resulting in the purchase of two pictures, both of which, in later years, after passing to the gallery at Düsseldorf, were transferred to Munich.
In both we see Rembrandt at his most characteristic—his determination to tell his story clearly, to concentrate his light upon the chief figure, the keynote of his theme, to get the true and expressive actions of his personages, not even yet free of some exaggeration, without troubling a jot as to the minor detail of correct costume. So, in the first, "The Elevation of the Cross" [No. 327], the cross, with the tense figure wrung with anguish, slants right athwart the picture, and stands out against the murky sky and dim surrounding crowds with startling incisiveness. So the four men occupied in raising it display an almost passionate energy; so a soldier wears a more or less classical helmet and breastplate over a sleeved doublet unknown to Rome; a man behind is dressed in the peasant's ordinary garb of Rembrandt's day; and another, wearing a doublet and soft flat cap, seems to be Rembrandt's self; while the centurion on horseback superintending the carrying out of the sentence is a frank Turk as to his headgear, a nondescript for the rest of him. The other, "The Descent from the Cross" [No. 326], while displaying many of the same qualities, merits and defects alike, is more deliberately composed, suffers indeed from that over-composition already noticed, being too obviously built up into that high pyramidal form, which we found in "The Presentation in the Temple." There is, nevertheless, a very delicate sentiment of pathos in it, and that Rembrandt himself was content with it, is shown not only by his correspondence with Huygens on the subject, but by the fact that he repeated it on a larger scale during the following year. Yet so curiously capricious was he in adding or withholding date and signature that neither has a date, and only "The Descent from the Cross" is inscribed with what appears to be C. Rlembrant f.
[Munich Gallery