Rembrandt Revelry
Sunday July 9, 2006
Dutch Master's 400th Birthday Celebrated at The Met
by Stan Parchin
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has joined the esteemed cadre of international institutions honoring the 400th birthday of celebrated Dutch Baroque painter, engraver and draftsman Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669). Rembrandt and His Circle: Drawings and Prints runs from July 11 through October 15, 2006 in The Met's Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Gallery for Drawings and Prints. Culled from The Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints, its Robert Lehman Collection and one New York private collection, 44 of the 58 light-sensitive works on paper are by the master himself. Others on display in this intimate space were produced by artists of his school.
Rembrandt was inspired by stories from the Old and New Testaments. He included Biblical passages in many of his inventive graphic works. On view are two rarely seen masterpieces that illustrate the artist's religious inspiration: Rembrandt's drawing of The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci (1634-35) and his dramatic Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves, also called The Three Crosses (1653), one of the artist's dramatic masterpieces that accurately describes the incredibly bleak environment of seventeenth-century Holland.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669)
The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci
1634-35
Red chalk
14 1/4 x 18 11/16 in. (36.2 x 47.5 cm)
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.794)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Stan Parchin
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has joined the esteemed cadre of international institutions honoring the 400th birthday of celebrated Dutch Baroque painter, engraver and draftsman Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669). Rembrandt and His Circle: Drawings and Prints runs from July 11 through October 15, 2006 in The Met's Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Gallery for Drawings and Prints. Culled from The Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints, its Robert Lehman Collection and one New York private collection, 44 of the 58 light-sensitive works on paper are by the master himself. Others on display in this intimate space were produced by artists of his school.
Rembrandt was inspired by stories from the Old and New Testaments. He included Biblical passages in many of his inventive graphic works. On view are two rarely seen masterpieces that illustrate the artist's religious inspiration: Rembrandt's drawing of The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci (1634-35) and his dramatic Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves, also called The Three Crosses (1653), one of the artist's dramatic masterpieces that accurately describes the incredibly bleak environment of seventeenth-century Holland.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669)The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci
1634-35
Red chalk
14 1/4 x 18 11/16 in. (36.2 x 47.5 cm)
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.794)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669)
Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves, called
The Three Crosses,1653
Drypoint and engraving on vellum; first state of five
Gift of Feliz M. Warburg and His Family, 1941
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Comments
Interesting how Rembrandt didn’t see Mary Magdalene in Leonardo’s painting.