Rembrandt (1606-1669)
Sketch of The Knight with the Falcon, known as the “Crusader”
1659–1661
Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 55.5 cm
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Surrounded by darkness, a face brightens up to meet the viewer. The eyes hold us tight. It could be a random man whom Rembrandt had met on a trip through Amsterdam and invited into the studio to sit as a model. The face is a study in light. Through 5 steps, Rembrandt has painted all degrees from the most illuminated to the darkest. Each step has its own color and brush stroke. The scale goes from the whitest highlights, over the skin tones to a black-brown color. The grey-brown primer appears here and there and acts as a sixth colour. The light source is not explained. Most of all, the face seems to light up by itself. The sketch is also a preparatory work for the painting “St. Bavo”, now at the museum in Gothenburg. St. Bavo is a figure from the Dutch Middle Ages who was named a saint for his ascetic and charitable way of life. Rembrandt only painted the face and hair, the cloak with the Crusader emblem was painted later, presumably to make the sketch more “finished” and thus more marketable. Source: Eva de la Fuente Pedersen, EXHIBITIONTEXT, 31.12.2010.
The former director and Rembrandt connoisseur at the National Gallery of Denmark, Karl Madsen, found The Crusader in 1911 in a secluded corner of Fredensborg Palace, where it was temporarily deposited. Despite Karl Madsen’s enthusiasm, doubts were quickly cast on the painting’s status before it was written off from Rembrandt in 1969. The latest research now shows that it is a sketch of The Knight with the Falcon (Gothenburg Museum of Art). X-ray recordings support this assumption, as they show that the painting’s underlying layers of painting are built up in a way that is typical of Rembrandt. The motif probably depicts the Dutch saint St. Bavo, and the painting contains the convincing interaction between the precise and the spontaneous that is typical of Rembrandt. At the same time, it shows the pastose style of painting that is characteristic of the artist’s late work. There are temporary signs that parts of the painting were executed by one of Rembrandt‘s pupils, which was common practice in the master’s workshop. (SMK)