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拍品专文
...'also here is the rarest print published by Rembrandt, in which Christ is healing the sick, and I know that in Holland [it] has been sold various times for 100 guilders and more; and it is as large as this sheet of paper, very fine and lovely, but ought to cost 30 guilders. It is very beautiful and pure.'
So states Jan Meyssens of Antwerp to Carolus van den Bosch, Bishop of Bruges, in a letter dated 9 February 1654. This extract provides the clue as to how this print gained its famous sobriquet: the print was so desirable that only a few years after its creation it was changing hands for the exceptionally high price of one hundred guilders.
The Hundred Guilder Print, as it became known, was much desired by collectors and praised by scholars and connoisseurs from early on. In the 18th century, Edmé-François Gersaint (1694–1750), who compiled the first systematic catalogue of Rembrandt prints, called it his ‘most capital performance’ and admired it for having ‘tout l’esprit imaginable’. In 1911, Charles J. Holmes (1868-1936) wrote that the print ‘aims at combining in a single plate force, pathos, mystery, and complexity, and does so with a brilliance and power that are beyond praise. In boldness of mass, richness of innovation, and certainly of line, no other print of Rembrandt surpasses it.’ (Holmes, p. 97) In our own time, Clifford Ackley placed it in the wider cannon of printmaking as follows: ‘It is a self-conscious masterpiece, a ‘just-try-and-surpass-this’ challenge thrown down to his contemporaries and to future generations of artists. It falls into the same category as such legendarily ambitious and virtuoso artistic statements in print as Albrecht Dürer’s Master Prints […] in the early sixteenth century, or, in our time, Pablo Picasso’s Minotauromachia.’ (Ackley, p. 204)
These three quotes only confirm what is immediately manifest when looking at The Hundred Guilder Print: it is a highly ambitious and complex, even complicated work, which poses countless questions. ‘Looking and overlooking’, as Jürgen Müller quipped, ‘go hand-in-hand in the Hundred Guilder Print.’ (J. Müller, ‘Homer and the Pharisees – A new aspect of Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print’, in: Buck et al., p. 45) Never before had Rembrandt attempted anything on this scale, richness of detail, depth of thought and technical sophistication in print.
To describe its subject or find a suitable title for the print already poses problems, and today’s habitual title Christ healing the Sick only covers some of its content. In the past, the print had also been known as Christ preaching, which is equally correct and insufficient. It is now well established that in fact this multitudinous scene depicts or alludes to almost the entire narrative of Matthew 19 which, rather than paraphrasing it, is worth quoting at length:
And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judæa beyond Jordan; And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him […]
Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.
Rembrandt combined not only the various episodes – the healing of the sick, the doubting pharisees, the welcoming of the children, the advice he gives to the rich young man, the proverb of the camel going through the eye of a needle – into one single scene or rather various scenes within a single image, but also attempted to convey the overarching message of the text. He does so by depicting many of the events, but also by developing a whole new pictorial language, which is symbolic of Christ’s teachings and of His nature as the Savior and Redeemer. It is a language that is based primarily on light and shadow. This is immediately evident in the way Rembrandt renders the light emanating from the head of Christ, whose features are ethereal, insubstantial, compared to the many other faces in the crowd. In a particularly subtle, but all the more astonishing detail, the shadow of Christ’s raised left hand projected onto his cloak seems to reach down towards the shadow of the hands of the praying woman kneeling below him to the right. What at first glance appears to be a random play of light and shade is in fact a spiritual manifestation: ‘Rembrandt seems to be giving form to the paradox of incarnation: Christ is both a real human and a true god.’ (Müller, ibid., p. 53) Above all, however, The Hundred Guilder Print is a dualistic image, divided into a brightly lit left and a dark right side. It is through this division that Rembrandt finds a visual equivalent for the fundamental lesson of Christ’s teachings and the seemingly paradoxical final sentence of Matthew 19: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
Christopher White wrote that ‘the underlying theme is unmistakably: Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ (White, p. 54) Müller is more explicit in his interpretation: ‘we can point to these New Testament paradoxes of the last being the first or the humbling of the exalted. In the Christian perspective, the world is subject to the same law of reversal. For Rembrandt, the phenomena of the world stand in inverse proportion to their actual importance. He pushes this idea so far that he reverses representational conventions.’ (Müller, ibid., p. 56) As a result, the powerful, the rich, the educated and doubtful are predominantly on the light left side, while the sick, the poor, the humble and faithful are on the dark right side of the image.
So states Jan Meyssens of Antwerp to Carolus van den Bosch, Bishop of Bruges, in a letter dated 9 February 1654. This extract provides the clue as to how this print gained its famous sobriquet: the print was so desirable that only a few years after its creation it was changing hands for the exceptionally high price of one hundred guilders.
The Hundred Guilder Print, as it became known, was much desired by collectors and praised by scholars and connoisseurs from early on. In the 18th century, Edmé-François Gersaint (1694–1750), who compiled the first systematic catalogue of Rembrandt prints, called it his ‘most capital performance’ and admired it for having ‘tout l’esprit imaginable’. In 1911, Charles J. Holmes (1868-1936) wrote that the print ‘aims at combining in a single plate force, pathos, mystery, and complexity, and does so with a brilliance and power that are beyond praise. In boldness of mass, richness of innovation, and certainly of line, no other print of Rembrandt surpasses it.’ (Holmes, p. 97) In our own time, Clifford Ackley placed it in the wider cannon of printmaking as follows: ‘It is a self-conscious masterpiece, a ‘just-try-and-surpass-this’ challenge thrown down to his contemporaries and to future generations of artists. It falls into the same category as such legendarily ambitious and virtuoso artistic statements in print as Albrecht Dürer’s Master Prints […] in the early sixteenth century, or, in our time, Pablo Picasso’s Minotauromachia.’ (Ackley, p. 204)
These three quotes only confirm what is immediately manifest when looking at The Hundred Guilder Print: it is a highly ambitious and complex, even complicated work, which poses countless questions. ‘Looking and overlooking’, as Jürgen Müller quipped, ‘go hand-in-hand in the Hundred Guilder Print.’ (J. Müller, ‘Homer and the Pharisees – A new aspect of Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print’, in: Buck et al., p. 45) Never before had Rembrandt attempted anything on this scale, richness of detail, depth of thought and technical sophistication in print.
To describe its subject or find a suitable title for the print already poses problems, and today’s habitual title Christ healing the Sick only covers some of its content. In the past, the print had also been known as Christ preaching, which is equally correct and insufficient. It is now well established that in fact this multitudinous scene depicts or alludes to almost the entire narrative of Matthew 19 which, rather than paraphrasing it, is worth quoting at length:
And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judæa beyond Jordan; And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him […]
Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.
Rembrandt combined not only the various episodes – the healing of the sick, the doubting pharisees, the welcoming of the children, the advice he gives to the rich young man, the proverb of the camel going through the eye of a needle – into one single scene or rather various scenes within a single image, but also attempted to convey the overarching message of the text. He does so by depicting many of the events, but also by developing a whole new pictorial language, which is symbolic of Christ’s teachings and of His nature as the Savior and Redeemer. It is a language that is based primarily on light and shadow. This is immediately evident in the way Rembrandt renders the light emanating from the head of Christ, whose features are ethereal, insubstantial, compared to the many other faces in the crowd. In a particularly subtle, but all the more astonishing detail, the shadow of Christ’s raised left hand projected onto his cloak seems to reach down towards the shadow of the hands of the praying woman kneeling below him to the right. What at first glance appears to be a random play of light and shade is in fact a spiritual manifestation: ‘Rembrandt seems to be giving form to the paradox of incarnation: Christ is both a real human and a true god.’ (Müller, ibid., p. 53) Above all, however, The Hundred Guilder Print is a dualistic image, divided into a brightly lit left and a dark right side. It is through this division that Rembrandt finds a visual equivalent for the fundamental lesson of Christ’s teachings and the seemingly paradoxical final sentence of Matthew 19: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
Christopher White wrote that ‘the underlying theme is unmistakably: Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ (White, p. 54) Müller is more explicit in his interpretation: ‘we can point to these New Testament paradoxes of the last being the first or the humbling of the exalted. In the Christian perspective, the world is subject to the same law of reversal. For Rembrandt, the phenomena of the world stand in inverse proportion to their actual importance. He pushes this idea so far that he reverses representational conventions.’ (Müller, ibid., p. 56) As a result, the powerful, the rich, the educated and doubtful are predominantly on the light left side, while the sick, the poor, the humble and faithful are on the dark right side of the image.