From the time his mother read
aloud to him from the big volume that contained both the Old and the New Testaments,
Rembrandt looked often at the book, gathering ever new inspiration from its
pages. Both the Old and the New Testament provided subjects for his artistic
output, and if one should, pedantically, make an inventory of his paintings,
etchings and drawings, one may find a balance favoring New Testament themes.
And yet, while the
latter may have exercised a more intense religious fanaticism upon him (the
figure of Jesus undoubtedly touched his heart as an ideal, especially the Jesus
who loved little children, the poor and the suffering), the impression prevails
that the Old Testament held a greater attraction for him than the New.
It
was the Old Testament that especially spurred his imagination. It contained
not one outstanding figure, but many who were revealed in human activities and
suffering, not as gods, but as mortals endowed with tremendous potentialities....
The affection which the Bible was held by Rembrandt was not peculiar to him
in the Holland of the 17th century, but was shared by the entire population.
The people of Holland, comparatively small in number, had thrown off the yoke
of the powerful Spanish oppressor, and they identified with the children of
Israel, also an oppressed group, that had freed themselves from Egyptian bondage.
During the seventeenth century, the Dutch theater presented several dramas based
on Old Testament themes.*
Rembrandt produced many paintings
of biblical characters, among them Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
Moses, Joshua, Samson, Saul and David. In addition, he painted several scenes
from the Book of Esther. In The Triumph of Mordecai we view Mordecai arrayed
in royal robes and escorted through the streets of the city mounted on a magnificently
apparelled horse -- all this in reward for having uncovered the plot against
the life of the king. Haman, his adversary, is compelled to proclaim before
him: "Thus shall be done unto the man whom the king wishes to honor."
Rembrandt produced many paintings
of biblical characters, among them Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
Moses, Joshua, Samson, Saul and David. In addition, he painted several scenes
from the Book of Esther. In The Triumph of Mordecai we view Mordecai arrayed
in royal robes and escorted through the streets of the city mounted on a magnificently
apparelled horse -- all this in reward for having uncovered the plot against
the life of the king. Haman, his adversary, is compelled to proclaim before
him: "Thus shall be done unto the man whom the king wishes to honor."
n this etching King Ahasuerus
and Esther are shown sitting in a loge; the populace grouped about the beautiful
caparisoned horse; but mounted upon this steed we see none other than the same
aged Jews who appears in Rembrandt's etching of Jacob and Benjamin. Upright
he sits upon the hose, facing the beholder, but on his face there is a somewhat
skeptical express; for a Jew would have a realization of the rapidity with which
the royal favor of today might be changed into hatred and persecution on the
morrow or the day following.
[*] In 1618 Abraham
de Kong's The Tragedy of Samson was published. Nicolaes Vonteyn's
play, Esther, or The Picture of Obedience, appeared in the
same year. Holland's foremost poet, Joost van den Vondel, wrote two dramas
based upon incidents from the story of Joseph, and translated a third
from the Latin of Hugo Grotius, the celebrated Dutch jurist. [back]
From:
Rembrandt: The Jews and the Bible, by Franz Landsberger, trans. from
the German by Felix N. Geson. Jewish Publication Society, 1946.
