Rembrandts Religious Paintings as Spirit

7/21/2019 Rembrandts Religious Paintings as Spirit

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Rembrandt’s Religious Paintings

as Spiritual Autobiography

The Leiden Years

If the paintings done by Rembrandt in the first eight years of his career—the

years between 1624 when he turned 18, and 1631 when he came of age at 25

and moved to Amsterdam—are viewed as autobiographical they coincide

rather strongly with the hypothesis that at some point early in those years he

affiliated with the Leiden Mennonite community.

It is clear that Rembrandt’s art took a major step upward on the technical

level after his time of study with Lastman in 1625. The differences between the

1624 paintings and the 1625 Stoning of St. Stephen (Lyon) are dramatic. He not

only had almost immediately equaled his teacher, he had surpassed him.



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Lastman had remained a Catholic, but he painted biblical events in a way

that was quite different from the previous Catholic tradition. His young pupil

emulated him in this respect, but not slavishly. Already as a teenager

Rembrandt began to depict biblical scenes in a unique way.

What is significant about the 1625 painting as a part of Rembrandt’s

biography is that St. Stephen is depicted in the robes of a Catholic deacon, and

that Rembrandt has given the saint his own face.

It may be significant that Lastman was a Catholic. There is rather strong

evidence that Rembrandt’s mother and her extended family remained

Catholic. In any case this painting surely reflects the severe religious conflicts

taking place in Leiden during Rembrandt’s early years.

A second painting, dated 1626 (Leiden), done in the same style and on a

similarly sized panel, addresses the Leiden religious conflicts directly, by

intimating that the strict Calvinists who had temporarily taken power in

Leiden should follow the example of Charles V in granting toleration to an

opposition religious community. The two groups in Leiden who were seeking

religious toleration were the Remonstrants and the Mennonites.



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There is evidence that the owner of both paintings was Petrus Scriverius, a

leader of the Remonstrant community in Leiden. There is also evidence that

two of Rembrandt’s earliest portraits are of Scriverius and his wife.

But in 1626 three signed and dated paintings can be read as an indication

that Rembrandt had affiliated with the Mennonite community at that point in

his life.

The first is Balaam Defying the Angel (Paris, Musée Cognacq-Jay), which

depicts an obscure event in the Hebrew Scriptures, one which Lastman had

previously painted. The message of the Balaam story is that God can speak

directly to persons with prophetic gifts, requiring them to make major changes

in their plans—changes which can be and often are quite costly. The

emotional force in

this painting isextraordinary, and

especially so for a

young artist just

turning 20. The

most obvious

explanation for this

is to assume that it is

based on a similar

event that the artist

had experienced

personally.



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That this event was an evangelical conversion—of the kind that was

considered not only normative but also necessary for membership in the

Mennonite community—is provided by a second 1626 painting, St. Philip

Baptizing the Ethiopian (Utrecht). There is no event in all Scripture that moreclearly corresponds to the Anabaptist and Mennonite conception of salvation.

In this view one becomes a Christian by the first accepting the Scriptures as

authoritative, and then by witnessing to this decision by accepting baptism.

Since this decision can only be made by an adult it is not available to children,

but neither does it require a lengthy period of catechesis or doctrinal

preparation. Thus the story of an individual reading the Scriptures, and then

coming to understand their message from a fellow layman, and then

immediately accepting baptism at his hands, strongly validates the theology

and practice of theearly Anabaptists

and Mennonites.



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This image was later published as an engraving, which would indicate that it

had a sizable market, and the most likely market for this image would have

been the Mennonite community.

The third 1626 painting that is consistent with the hypothesis that

Rembrandt affiliated with the Mennonite community in Leiden that year is

Jesus Cleansing the Temple (Pushkin). Again the image of Jesus freeing the

temple of his time from the corruption of priestly practices is one that strongly

coincided with Anabaptist-Mennonite beliefs.

These Christians viewed themselves as a courageous and prophetic remnant

who were restoring the Christian church to its original purity, which it

maintained at the time of Christ. They viewed both the older Roman and the

newer Reformation institutions as hopelessly corrupt and incapable of reform.



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The 1627 painting St. Paul in Prison (Stuttgart) is also consistent with the

Anabaptist Mennonite self-conception.

Seventeenth-century evangelicals identified with St. Paul rather than St.

Peter, as has been the case throughout history, up to the present. Thus for

Rembrandt to depict St. Paul as a prisoner in Rome, with his sword beside

him, deeply immersed in theological contemplation, was consistent with the

historical views of the post-Reformation evangelical community—which at

that time in the Netherlands was almost exclusively Mennonite.



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That same perspective is clearly apparent in the 1628 painting Peter and

Paul Disputing (Melbourne). Here St. Paul is depicted in the light, and is

instructing the smaller Peter about the meaning of scripture.

In this image the authority of the written word is depicted in multiple ways.

Although it is Peter who holds the written text in his hand, it is Paul who

explains its meaning to him. Nothing could be more central to evangelical and

Mennonite beliefs than the authority of the written word. This view was shared

by other Protestants, but not to the extent held by Mennonites, who prided

themselves in reading the scriptures without compromise or tradition.



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This Biblical literalism is also apparent in the 1628 painting Peter at the

Soldiers’ Fire (Tokyo). This image emphasizes the fact that Peter betrayed

Christ when Christ was arrested. In the Mennonite view this betrayal has been

maintained in the institutional church’s denial of the several places in theGospels where military violence is prohibited to Christians.

There is nothing more distinctive about the Mennonite tradition than its

long-standing confessional requirement that its members refrain from military

service. This combined with a belief that when Jesus modeled non-resistance

to evil at his death he intended for his followers to imitate him, even at the cost

of their own deaths.



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This theme is also present in an undated painting that appears only in the

Bredius catalog, and appears not to have been published or studied since that

time.

It depicts Jesus awaiting trial while being guarded by a soldier. He has been

stripped of his clothing and stands rather stoically awaiting his fate, which he

realizes is certain death. He is looking down on a pile of armament at his feet

with a rather disdainful expression, producing an image that would have been

consistent with the Mennonite rejection of military service.

It is convenient to dismiss this painting as inauthentic, but the fact that

Bredius found it worthy of inclusion in his catalogue means that it cannot be

dismissed without further study. And the fact that when viewed in the context

of Rembrandt’s other early paintings it produces a coherent reading increases

the likelihood that it was painted by Rembrandt.



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There is another frequently published painting from the 1620s that supports

the hypothesis that the young Rembrandt experienced a mystical conversion at

some point in his early 20s. It is The Risen Christ at Emmaus (Paris, Musée

Jacquemart-André).

Once again the emotional force of this small image is very surprising for

such a young artist—and for any artist at any age to convey its sense of

participation in the event it depicts is very difficult to explain, unless it is

regarded as depicting a spiritual event the author had himself experienced.

The fact that it was originally painted on paper, and only later glued to a

panel, is further evidence that supports the hypothesis that it was painted

during the artist’s personal contemplation of this story from the Gospel

According to Luke. Such individual contemplation of scripture is a practice

that lies at the center of evangelical piety.



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In 1629 Rembrandt produced the painting that would take him into the

front ranks of Dutch painters, thanks to Constantin Huygens. This is The

Repentant Judas (Mulgrave Castle, UK).

It is also a painting that takes us into the heart of Rembrandt, who would

struggle throughout his life with competing desires for recognition as an artist,

and the wealth that would bring him, and his commitment to the evangelical

Christianity he had learned in the Mennonite community and which had

taught him that faithfulness to Jesus’ example was a necessity that could never

be compromised, and that would often be costly at the personal level.

The painting itself is a tour de force, the result of several years of intense

self-development in the ability to depict human emotion. Huygens

commented on Rembrandts’s self-discipline, which he regarded as almost

excessive, but it is difficult to imagine Rembrandt’s future career without thisperiod of learning. And it is possible, if not probable, to account for his ability

to do so by his participation in the Mennonite community, which has always

emphasized personal self-discipline as an essential aspect of Christian faith.



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The 1629 Judas painting has at its center the connection between money

and religious authority and power. This continues a theme that first appeared

in the 1626 Cleansing of the Temple (and in a less direct way in the 1627 The

Rich Fool).

This theme would be continued in another 1629 painting The Tribute

Money (Ottawa).

Once again this is an area of concern that was the central to the Anabaptist

Mennonite community, which constantly struggled with the problem of living

in a civil society while maintaining a primary allegiance to their own religious

communities, something which often brought them into direct conflict with

civil authorities.



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In 1630 a new mood appears in Rembrandt’s religious paintings. It is most

obvious in the great 1630 painting Jeremiah Leaving Jerusalem (Rijksmuseum),

which depicts the aged prophet viewing the destruction of the Jerusalem

temple in 586 BC. Jeremiah had long predicted this catastrophe, and had doneeverything in his power to prevent it, but he had been ignored, and now was

condemned to observe it taking place.

Once again the emotional force conveyed by this painting can best be

explained by postulating that Rembrandt was using this story from the ancient

past to depict his own emotions in the present. In the late 1620s the city of

Leiden had been taken over by recent immigrants from the Hapsburg

territories to the south who were determined to pursue an anti-Catholic

foreign policy that the Remonstrants and Mennonites could not support.



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This sense of defeat it is also present in the undated St. Paul in Recollection

(Nuremberg). The sense of defeat in these paintings is consistent with the

failure of the Leiden Anabaptist Mennonite community to achieve a

substantial standing in the religious community of the time.

They believed deeply in a Kingdom of God on this earth, but they had not

been able to achieve it—at least not in the present. The most they had been

able to achieve was a sense that they were following the Scriptures without

compromise—and just as St. Paul’s writing had become recognized centuries

after his death, so would their witness to nonviolence and religious liberty.

It is possible to hypothesize that Rembrandt’s move to Amsterdam was

motivated by the fact that the Mennonite community there had achieved a

more substantial and honored place in society.



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Leaving Leiden

When Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631 the contents of his

paintings changed rather radically. No longer do we find the intensely personalspiritual depictions of biblical events that characterize his Leiden years. Instead

we find a vast outpouring of society portraits. The religious paintings from this

period are rather conventional images that would have had a ready market at

the time. They are not the paintings that have established Rembrandt’s

reputation in the years since.

That Rembrandt not only affiliated himself with a Mennonite art dealer, but

also lived with him, provides substantial evidence that he retained his

affiliation with the Mennonite community when he came to Amsterdam.

But when he met his future wife Saskia, who was not a Mennonite, the

evidence of his Mennonite affiliations disappears. There are some sketches of

scenes that would be consistent with his Mennonite past, but they are

completely overshadowed by portraits of his non-Mennonite clientele, and his

non-Mennonite wife. It is not until John The Baptist Preaching (Berlin), now

estimated to have been painted in the mid to late 1630s, that we once again

have evidence of his Mennonite beliefs.



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This coincides with the

immense tragedy of his first

three children all dying in

infancy, and it is in that periodthat the 1637 Biblical painting

The Archangel Departing Tobit’s

Family (Louvre) was produced.

Another Biblical image

depicting the loss of spiritual

protection, Belshazzar’s Feast

(London, National Gallery), is

estimated to have been

produced at approximately the

same time.



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In 1636 Rembrandt completely discontinued painting portraits, and would

paint them only occasionally in the remaining years.

But in 1640 Rembrandt painted three portraits, all of them Mennonites.

And in 1641 he painted the widely published double portrait of the

Amsterdam Mennonite preacher, Cornelis Anslo, and his wife.



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After Saskia

When Rembrandt’s wife Saskia died in 1642, leaving him with an infantson, his life entered a new era, and with it his art.

He had just painted what is arguably his greatest masterwork, The Night

Watch, but now his personal life descended into what can only be described as

a living hell. He turned increasingly to his Jewish neighbors, and painted the

carcass of a slaughtered ox.

In 1646 his spirit was renewed by a spiritual event, which he depicted in a

marvelous but largely ignored painting, Abraham Entertaining the Angels, now

in the Hermitage, but only infrequently published.



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The years between 1642 and 1649 were years of barrenness, both personally

and artistically. But in the end they produced one of Rembrandt’s greatest

works, the Hundred Guilder Print .

It may have been the only work he produced that year.

When read autobiographically against the background of the chapter from

the Gospels which it exegetes (Matthew 19) it reveals a richness that is virtually

unique in art history. Aside from its power as a work of art it is an equally

powerful work of Biblical interpretation, worthy of the greatest of the Biblical

scholars, and far ahead of the Biblical scholarship of his time.

Once again we find an emotional intensity that is unique, and which is very

difficult to explain if it was not the product of personal experience.



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In 1652 there is an etchingthat clearly depicts a

mystical experience.

That same year

Rembrandt may have

produced the undated

Mary at The Annunciation

(Prague), which also

depicts an intense mystical

event.



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In 1656, as he was facing a financial disaster that would result in his losing

his home and most of his possessions, Rembrandt began a series of paintings

which depict the head of Christ. In the end he would not succeed—as no other

artist ever has—but he did produce the beautiful but seldom published 1661

Head of Christ (Glen Falls).

There is an intensity of love in this face that could only have been painted by

an artist who had experienced that love.



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The Final Years

In 1659, or thereabouts—the year when Rembrandt was forced to leave hismansion on Breestrat and move to a rented house in the working-class section

of Amsterdam—he painted yet another image which depicts an intense

mystical experience.

It is Jacob Wrestling the Angel (Berlin), an image which combines the erotic

and the spiritual in a way that is utterly unique in post-Reformation

Christianity.



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That same year he painted his contemporary, the poet and playwright Joost

van den Vondel, who had collaborated with him in producing the portrait of

Anslo. Vondel had begun his life as a Mennonite, but converted to

Catholicism in midlife. Rembrandt also that year painted the portrait of aCapuchin friar.

In 1661 Rembrandt painted a series of portraits of the Twelve Apostles.

Arthur Wheelock assembled this series for an exhibition at the National

Gallery in Washington in 200?. What is significant about this series of portraits

is that they depict the apostles as ordinary laymen who have been called to an

extraordinary responsibility. In 1661 Rembrandt painted his self-portrait as St.

Paul.



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When his common-law wife Hendrickje died in 1664, leaving behind their

young daughter, Rembrandt appears to have lost the will to go on. He painted

nothing that year except a portrait of Hendrickje as Lucretia, an image of great

emotional intensity.

It was probably the next year that he painted Haman Accepts His Fate

(Hermitage).

The palpable sense of regret in this image could only have come from

someone who was experiencing it.



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And when his beloved son Titus also died shortly after his marriage, leaving

behind a pregnant wife, Rembrandt could not go on.

His final gift to us is the towering masterpiece, now in the Hermitage, The

Return of the Prodigal Son. This is the work of such great spiritual depth that

one of the 20th

century’s leading spiritual writers, Henri Nouwen, made it the

subject of an entire book.



To view Rembrandt as though he were merely a painter leaves a great many

questions unanswered.

There were many great painters in the 17th

century, and there have been

many since. But none has had the impact or the following that Rembrandt has

had in the 20th

century.

How is this to be explained, if not by his own struggles with the same great

issues of the spirit that have confronted us in our time?

11.18.13

Rembrandts Religious Paintings as Spirit

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