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Lot Essay
Recognised as one of Rembrandt's earliest prints by Gersaint and Daulby, The Circumcision was subsequently rejected by Bartsch, Hind and others, but is now generally accpeted as one of the first, if not the first, etching by the artist. It was probably made when the artist was nineteen or twenty years old and is fully signed on the plate and bears the address of the publisher Jan Pietersz. Berendrecht, although Stogdon suggests this was added somewhat later, when it had become lucrative to publish a print by Rembrandt. According to Hinterding, Rembrandt may have still owned the plate in 1641 and Berendrecht died around 1645, which give us an approximate date of when the address was added and the print issued in a sizeable edition (see Stogdon, no. 14, p. 24).
Although the print looks somewhat clumsy and unrefined, with hardly any differentiation in the weight of the lines, it is rapidly and confidently drawn and already shows Rembrandt as a great story-teller. The scene is lively and the young artist knows how to arrange his figures and organise the space, even though he is not yet fully in command of perspective or light and shade. It is nevertheless an interesting and ambitious beginning for an artist, who would eventually master and manipulate the technique of etching like no other printmaker before or after him.
Although the print looks somewhat clumsy and unrefined, with hardly any differentiation in the weight of the lines, it is rapidly and confidently drawn and already shows Rembrandt as a great story-teller. The scene is lively and the young artist knows how to arrange his figures and organise the space, even though he is not yet fully in command of perspective or light and shade. It is nevertheless an interesting and ambitious beginning for an artist, who would eventually master and manipulate the technique of etching like no other printmaker before or after him.