ADAR Table of Contents

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.

Click to view picture enlarged

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

Rembrandt, Haman sets forth to honor Mordecai, c.1665 Click to view picture enlarged

Rembrandt, Haman and Ahasuerus at the banquet with Esther, c.1660 Click to view picture enlarged

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.

ADAR Table of Contents