Rembrandt's House by Bailey Anthony;

Author:Bailey, Anthony;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2014-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

Jews in a Synagogue. Etching, 1648. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

Certain subjects he went back to throughout his career: Abraham’s sacrifice, Samson, the Good Samaritan, Christ at Emmaus, the Flight into Egypt, the Prodigal Son, and so on. Professor Henri van de Waal, the Dutch art historian, has pointed out that many of Rembrandt’s works can be put into such categories as “a ruler on his throne” – many of the Saul, David, and Solomon pictures; “a beautiful nude woman in a landscape” – Bathsheba and Susannah; and “angels visiting human beings,” who include Hagar, Abraham, Lot, Elijah, Tobias, and Bethlehem shepherds. He enjoyed, apparently, the moment of contact between men and the divine messengers. He also liked “doorway scenes” – meetings, departures, welcomes, and goodbyes, incidents where compassion or forgiveness are shown, and particularly those in which fathers and sons are involved: Jacob and Joseph, David and Absalom, Tobit and Tobias. Since the art he made obviously reflects the person he was, one reads into this the strong affection he felt for his son, Titus – though it is hard to imagine that pensive boy becoming a troublesome teen-ager or the hairy dropout who is being greeted on his return home in The Prodigal Son etching.

The son who was prodigal was perhaps himself. But he showed his concern for his own father in some works that were prompted, it may be, by his father’s going blind. In the painting he did of his father in 1629 or 1630, the light falls on the old man’s lined forehead and on his blurred and red-rimmed eyes. The Biblical source here was the apocryphal Book of Tobit, which Rembrandt turned to for more than fifty works. (The Book of Tobit was included in the Dutch Bible authorized by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618, though not in the English King James version, but Dutch readers were warned that the book was untrustworthy, partly because in it an angel lies, telling Tobit that he is Azarias, son of one of Tobit’s relatives.) Tobit had gone blind while in exile in Babylon, but had kept to his faith. His son Tobias, while on a journey to collect a debt for his father, was joined by the angel Raphael. Raphael advised Tobias to catch a fish and save the entrails; also to stop at a house of a relative. There Tobias married the daughter, Sarah, and by burning some of the fish guts broke a curse that had killed her first seven husbands on their wedding night. Lucky number eight! When they all got back to Tobit’s house, Tobias used the remainder of the entrails to cure his father’s blindness. This folk tale was natural grist for Rembrandt’s mill. He illustrated various aspects of the story. He drew Tobit being operated on for cataracts. He made much of the dog, which accompanies Tobias on the journey and runs ahead to the old man’s house when the son returns. In the etching of

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