The Circumcision (1661)

Rembrandt (1606-1669)

The Circumcision
1661
Oil on canvas, 56.5 x 75 cm
National Gallery of ArtWashington

After learning the fundamentals of drawing and painting in his native LeidenRembrandt van Rijn went to Amsterdam in 1624 to study for six months with Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), a famous history painter. Upon completion of his training Rembrandt returned to Leiden. Around 1632 he moved to Amsterdam, quickly establishing himself as the town’s leading artist. He received many commissions for portraits and attracted a number of students who came to learn his method of painting. Only the Gospel of Luke, 2:15–22, mentions the circumcision of Christ: “the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem…. And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger…. And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus.” This cursory reference to this significant event in the early childhood of Christ allowed artists throughout history wide latitude in the way they represented the circumcision. The predominant Dutch pictorial tradition was to depict the ceremony as occurring in the Temple, but in this beautifully evocative painting Rembrandt places the scene in front of the stable. In this innovative composition, Mary, rather than Joseph or another male figure, tenderly holds her son in her lap in front of the ladder of the stable, just as she will cradle his corpse some thirty-three years later near a ladder leaning against the cross. In this way Rembrandt suggests the fundamental association between the circumcision and Christ’s final shedding of blood at his Crucifixion. Onlookers crowd around the scribe who records the name of the Child in a large book. Iconographic, compositional, and documentary evidence all point strongly to Rembrandt‘s authorship. The fact that a dealer, who knew Rembrandt‘s work well and who was in the midst of complex financial arrangements with him, paid a substantial amount of money for this painting makes it virtually certain that The Circumcision was executed by the master himself. In a space almost entirely shrouded in shadow, light falls across a bearded man kneeling in front of a woman cradling an infant, as about a dozen people to our left look on in this horizontal painting. The people all appear to have light skin, though some are deep in shadow. The scene is painted with dabs and soft strokes of peanut and coffee brown, golden yellow, ivory, smoke gray, and muted terracotta red, so many of the details are indistinct. At the bottom center of the painting, the man, woman, and baby are small in scale, reaching less than halfway up the composition. The kneeling man wears a long, pale yellow robe that pools around his bent legs. Facing our right in profile, he has a fringe of gray hair around his balding head and a gray beard. He reaches out toward the baby resting along the woman’s lap. The man holds an instrument like a stylus at the baby’s groin, and the child’s legs are bare. The infant is wrapped in a white cloth over his head and torso, and gold-colored fabric drapes over his head and shoulders. With tiny, rounded features, the baby looks toward the man at his feet. The woman wears a long-sleeved, muted red dress with white fabric across her chest. She looks down, and her head is wrapped with a pale gray turban that falls to either side of her face and covers her hair. At the front of the group of men and women looking on, to our left, a bearded man wearing a brown turban, a waist-length dark gray cape, and a lighter gray robe writes in an open book slung over his forearm. Several people, most also wearing turbans in silver gray, ruby red, or terracotta brown look over the man’s shoulder. A few more people look down at the scene from the shadows above, near the upper left corner of the painting. Behind the woman and child, a ladder leans against a platform, perhaps a loft, and draped fabric creates a canopy over the woman. A jumble of objects there merge with the deep shadows. (NGA)