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Lot Essay
Rembrandt sensitively captures a moment of divine domesticity: the shepherds gathering around Mary, Joseph and their newborn child in the manger. In this fine and bright impression, the mother and child sit in the enclosed safety of the stable, under an arch seemingly lit by a single flame. The etching, dated around 1654, is one of a series of six prints depicting scenes from Christ’s infancy and youth (B. 60, 55, 63, 45, 47, 64; New Holl. 276-281). Rembrandt executed each print on a small and intimate scale, suggestive of the fragility and humility of the young Christ.
This impression is completed in a rapid and spontaneous etching style, composed of energetic parallel hatching lines that direct the eye to the foremost figures of the composition. The figures of the Virgin and Child are more delicately depicted and stand out against a halo of blank paper in an otherwise densely worked scene.
Belonging to a significant iconographic tradition, this printed impression bears similarities to the compositional and atmospheric qualities of Rembrandt’s painted Adoration of the Shepherds of 1646, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. In both the painting and the print, Rembrandt demonstrates his mastery of chiaroscuro, expressed in the print through the subtly worked dark passage at the upper right. The lack of any other natural light source apart from the oil lamp is suggestive of the divine light emanating from the Christ child and the Virgin, allowing for an interplay of realism and spiritual reverence. Close to the child stands a shepherd with a the bagpipe, also found in two prints of the same subject by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), imbuing the scene with a sense of musicality and joy.
This impression is completed in a rapid and spontaneous etching style, composed of energetic parallel hatching lines that direct the eye to the foremost figures of the composition. The figures of the Virgin and Child are more delicately depicted and stand out against a halo of blank paper in an otherwise densely worked scene.
Belonging to a significant iconographic tradition, this printed impression bears similarities to the compositional and atmospheric qualities of Rembrandt’s painted Adoration of the Shepherds of 1646, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. In both the painting and the print, Rembrandt demonstrates his mastery of chiaroscuro, expressed in the print through the subtly worked dark passage at the upper right. The lack of any other natural light source apart from the oil lamp is suggestive of the divine light emanating from the Christ child and the Virgin, allowing for an interplay of realism and spiritual reverence. Close to the child stands a shepherd with a the bagpipe, also found in two prints of the same subject by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), imbuing the scene with a sense of musicality and joy.