![Ecce Homo MET MM30637](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Ecce_Homo_MET_MM30637.jpg)
''Christ Presented to the People'', also known as ''Ostentatio Christi'' or ''Ecce Homo'', is a
drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically ident ...
print by
Rembrandt van Rijn
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
which exists in eight states, all c.1655. It is one of the two largest prints made by Rembrandt, about , similar to his 1653 engraving of ''
The Three Crosses''. It has been described by
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
as "at the summit of the western printmaking tradition".
Description
The print depicts an episode from the
Passion of Jesus
In Christianity, the Passion (from the Latin verb ''patior, passus sum''; "to suffer, bear, endure", from which also "patience, patient", etc.) is the short final period in the life of Jesus Christ.
Depending on one's views, the "Passion" m ...
in which
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate (; grc-gre, Πόντιος Πιλᾶτος, ) was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 AD. He is best known for being the official who presided over the trial of J ...
presents
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
to the people, saying "
ecce homo" ("behold the man"), offering to free either Jesus or the notorious criminal
Barabbas
Barabbas (; ) was, according to the New Testament, a prisoner who was chosen over Jesus by the crowd in Jerusalem to be pardoned and released by Roman governor Pontius Pilate at the Passover feast.
Biblical account
According to all four canoni ...
, and asks the crowd to choose between them. The scene echoes contemporary judicial practice in the Netherlands, in which magistrates bearing a staff of office would present a condemned criminal to the public from a raised balcony or platform. The building in the background resembles the new Town Hall in Amsterdam by
Jacob van Campen
Jacob van Campen (2 February 1596 - 13 September 1657) was a Dutch artist and architect of the Dutch Golden Age, Golden Age.
Life
He was born into a wealthy family at Haarlem, and spent his youth in his home town. Being of noble birth and wit ...
, completed in 1655 and now the
Royal Palace of Amsterdam
The Royal Palace of Amsterdam in Amsterdam (Dutch: ''Koninklijk Paleis van Amsterdam'' or ) is one of three palaces in the Netherlands which are at the disposal of the monarch by Act of Parliament. It is situated on the west side of Dam Square i ...
.
The main figures are on a platform above the crowd, in front of a dark archway. Accompanied by armed guards, Pilate stands with a long staff, wearing an oriental turban and long gown, gesturing to the two prisoners who stand bound to the right. To the left is a scribe and youth with an ewer of water, ready for Pilate to wash his hands. Niches in the building behind them have allegorical sculptures of Justice and Fortitude. The building continues with windows and balconies on either side above arched doorways, one window perhaps occupied by
Pilate's wife
Pontius Pilate's wife is the unnamed spouse of Pontius Pilate, who appears only once in the Gospel of Matthew, where she intercedes with Pilate on Jesus' behalf. It is uncertain whether Pilate was actually married, although it is likely. In later ...
. Rembrandt has included a motley collection of characters in the crowd, with some Jewish elders observing to the right.
Rembrandt was inspired by
Lucas van Leyden's 1510 etching of the same scene, of which he owned a copy. Rembrandt continued producing prints until the 1660s, but this was the last depicting the Passion.
States
Rembrandt's prints were made from a
drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically ident ...
engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...
on
copper plate, and eight states are known. The first version, state i, measures , and the final version, state viii, is slightly shorter, measuring .
Save for the architecture to the top right, the first state was nearly complete. Only eight versions of the first state are known, printed on expensively imported yellowish
Japanese paper
is traditional Japanese paper. The term is used to describe paper that uses local fiber, processed by hand and made in the traditional manner. ''Washi'' is made using fibers from the inner bark of the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub (''Ed ...
. Seven are in public collections, at
Kupferstichkabinett Berlin
The Kupferstichkabinett, or Museum of Prints and Drawings, is a prints museum in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Berlin State Museums, and is located in the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany, ...
of the
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
The Berlin State Museums (german: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters, several research institutes, libraries, and supporting facilities. They are overseen ...
, the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in London, the
Morgan Library and Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...
in New York, the
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...
in Oxford, two in Paris at the Dutuit collection at the
Musée du Petit Palais
The Petit Palais (; en, Small Palace) is an art museum in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France.
Built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle ("universal exhibition"), it now houses the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts (''Musée des beaux-arts ...
and the collection of
Edmond de Rothschild
Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild (Hebrew: הברון אברהם אדמונד בנימין ג'יימס רוטשילד - ''HaBaron Avraham Edmond Binyamin Ya'akov Rotshield''; 19 August 1845 – 2 November 1934) was a French memb ...
at the
Musée du Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, and at the
Graphische Sammlung Albertina in Vienna. The last remaining impression of the first state in private hands was sold at
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
in July 2018 from the collection of the late
Samuel Josefowitz for £2.2 million, setting a record for an
Old Master print
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition. The term remains current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmakin ...
(passing the £410,000 paid for a print of Rembrandt's ''The Three Crosses'' in 2006). No impressions of the second to fourth states are held privately.
Only minor changes were made in the next two states. The second state adds
cross-hatched shading to the doorway to the left, and the third state adds similar shading to the right leg of the gesturing man on the left of the platform. The missing architecture to the top right is completed in the fourth state, with a balustrade added above the windows; at the same time, an inch (25 mm) was removed from the top of the print in this state, eliminating the architrave above the central building, allowing Rembrandt to print the whole composition on just a single sheet of paper: the first three impressions needed a thin strip of paper to be added along the top.
By the fifth state, several dozen impressions have been made and the soft copper plate was showing signs of wear, and some shading is added to the windows to the right. The wear was countered in the sixth state by significant reworking in some areas, including removing the crowd of figures in front of the central platform: only two impressions are known of this version. By the seventh state, two arches have been added to the front wall of the platform. Rembrandt signed and dated the seventh version, and then added more changes to the eighth and last version.
It is unclear why Rembrandt decided to print intermediate versions of the print, and indeed why they were printed on expensive imported paper. Usual practice was to take impression at each stage while the engraving developed on cheap paper which could be discarded, and then make several impressions of the completed version for sale. Only the last two states are signed and dated above the archway to the right of the central platform ("Rembrandt
f. 1655"), suggesting he may have regarded the others as only intermediate stages or
artist's proof
An artist's proof is an impression of a print taken in the printmaking process to see the current printing state of a plate while the plate (or stone, or woodblock) is being worked on by the artist. A proof may show a clearly incomplete image, ofte ...
s. However, Rembrandt may have been motivated by a commercial desire to sell rare limited editions to collectors.
Arnold Houbraken
Arnold Houbraken (28 March 1660 – 14 October 1719) was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of Dutch Golden Age painters.
Life
Houbraken was sent first to learn ''threadtwisting'' (Twyndraat) fr ...
noted in 1718 that Rembrandt would make small changes so he could sell prints as new designs.
Gallery
File:Rembrandt van Rijn - Christ Presented to the People.jpg, Version at the Saint Louis Art Museum
The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...
(state ii)
File:Rembrandt Christus aan het volk getoond.jpg, Version at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. RP-P-1975-1) (state iii)
File:B076s5 Rembrandt.jpg, Version at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (state v)
File:B076 Rembrandt.jpg, Version at the British Museum, London (state vi)
File:B076s7 Rembrandt.jpg, Version at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv RP-P-1962-121) (state vii)
See also
*
List of drawings by Rembrandt
The following is a list of drawings by Rembrandt that are generally accepted as autograph.
See also
*List of paintings by Rembrandt
*List of etchings by Rembrandt
*Rembrandt's Mughal drawings
In his late career in the 1650s, the Dutch artist ...
*
List of etchings by Rembrandt
The following is a list of etchings by the Dutch painter and etcher Rembrandt, with the catalogue numbers of Adam Bartsch.
Each change or addition to the plate that can be seen in a print is referred to as a 'state' of the print.
See also
*List ...
References
Christie's Old Masters – London 9 July 2018, Rehs Galleries, Inc
Rembrandt, "Christ presented to the people" ('Ecce Homo') Christie's, 5 July 2018
Christie's auction catalogue 5 July 2018
The culmination of an obsession: Rembrandt's ''Ecce Homo'' Christie's, 6 July 2018
Record for a Rembrandt print at Christie's Old Master sale Antiques Trade Gazette, 6 July 2018
Rembrandt in detail National Gallery, London
* Rijksmuseum
Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo), state iiistate viii
* British Museum
state istate iiistate iiistate ivstate ivstate vi
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
state iistate ivstate viii
Christ presented to the people: oblong plate, state v Art Gallery of New South Wales
Christ Presented to the People, Rembrandt, 1655 Google Arts & Culture, from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Christ Presented to the People Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo) Art Fund, from the Scottish National Gallery
Ecce Homo: Christ Presented to the People National Galleries Scotland, state v
* Morgan Library and Museum
*
state iCORSAIR Online Collection Catalog
*
state viiiCORSAIR Online Collection Catalog
{{Rembrandt
Prints in the Rijksmuseum
category:1655 works
category:Prints by Rembrandt
category:Prints depicting the Passion of Jesus