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Lot Essay
Rembrandt’s The Baptism of the Eunuch, etched in 1641, presents a moment of conversion, but also of welcoming of a stranger. The Ethiopian court official kneels beside a stream, his ornate robes gathered around him, as Philip prepares to baptise him. The composition is open and luminous, with the figures lightly etched against a pale, sketch-like landscape. The composition has the spatial delicacy that marks Rembrandt’s finest work of the early 1640s, and the tonality is deliberately restrained, allowing the event to emerge through gesture and placement rather than heavy contrast.
The print draws on a subject Rembrandt had explored in three earlier paintings, all indebted to his teacher Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), who depicted the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch from the Book of Acts (8:26-40) multiple times. The horseman’s plumed headdress, for instance, echoes Lastman’s exotic motifs, though Rembrandt reinterprets them with greater subtlety. The figure of the eunuch derives from an earlier red chalk sketch made by Rembrandt around 1635, while the horseman’s attire and bearing betrays his familiarity with Persian and Mughal miniatures. Hinterding thought that the print’s lightness of touch anticipated the silverpoint-like etchings of the mid-1640s, such as Saint Peter in Penitence (B. 96; New Holl. 225) or The Rest on the Flight into Egypt: lightly etched (B. 58; New Holl. 227).
The Baptism of the Eunuch is formally ambitious. The figures are arranged in a shallow arc, the landscape recedes with minimal intervention, and the water’s surface is left almost untouched. The result is a print that rewards close looking: subtle, deliberate, and quietly expansive.
The print draws on a subject Rembrandt had explored in three earlier paintings, all indebted to his teacher Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), who depicted the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch from the Book of Acts (8:26-40) multiple times. The horseman’s plumed headdress, for instance, echoes Lastman’s exotic motifs, though Rembrandt reinterprets them with greater subtlety. The figure of the eunuch derives from an earlier red chalk sketch made by Rembrandt around 1635, while the horseman’s attire and bearing betrays his familiarity with Persian and Mughal miniatures. Hinterding thought that the print’s lightness of touch anticipated the silverpoint-like etchings of the mid-1640s, such as Saint Peter in Penitence (B. 96; New Holl. 225) or The Rest on the Flight into Egypt: lightly etched (B. 58; New Holl. 227).
The Baptism of the Eunuch is formally ambitious. The figures are arranged in a shallow arc, the landscape recedes with minimal intervention, and the water’s surface is left almost untouched. The result is a print that rewards close looking: subtle, deliberate, and quietly expansive.