3-028-306 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Descent From The Cross," etching by Rembrandt, 1870. Wood engraving after an etching of 1633. '...the turbaned Jew, in his richly embroidered and fur-lined mantle is supposed to represent Joseph of Arimathea. To the right are two of the Marys, spreading a carpet for the body, and the third is seen beneath the ladder...Although the subject...had been treated by many great artists before Rembrandt, yet [he] succeeded in investing it with a new and peculiar interest. The figures, it is true, are frightfully ugly, even beyond Rembrandt's wont. The three Marys, by their vulgar types and strange coiffures, are deprived of all the conventional charms of womankind. Joseph...has the costume of a Dutch burgomaster, and stands with the indifferent air of a man simply commissioned to see the interment decently conducted. Yet, with the simple aid of chiaroscuro, Rembrandt suggests, by the light falling from above, the regard of the Almighty falling on the victim of His justice...The ignoble character of the assistants and the spectators is lost sight of in sympathy with their expressive gestures of sorrow, and of reverent preparations to receive the body, contrasted, as they are, so forcibly with the impassibility of the rich Jew who superintends'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.