''The Prodigal Son in the Brothel'' or ''The Prodigal Son in the Tavern'' or ''Rembrandt and Saskia in the parable of the prodigal son'' (german: Rembrandt und Saskia im Gleichnis vom verlorenen Sohn) is a painting by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

master

Rembrandt 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 ...

. It is now in the

Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (, ''Old Masters Gallery'') in Dresden, Germany, displays around 750 paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It includes major Italian Renaissance works as well as Dutch and Flemish paintings. Outstandin ...

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It is signed "REMBRANDT F.". It portrays two people who had been identified as Rembrandt himself and his wife

Saskia Saskia is a Germanic feminine given name. There are at least two different sources of the name. One is of North German and Northeast Netherlands origin, where it originally meant "a Saxon woman" ( metathesis of "Saxia"). Notable people with the n ...

. In the

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

contemporary world, the theme of the

prodigal son The Parable of the Prodigal Son (also known as the parable of the Two Brothers, Lost Son, Loving Father, or of the Forgiving Father) is one of the parables of Jesus Christ in the Bible, appearing in Luke 15:11–32. Jesus shares the parable with ...

was a frequent subject for works of art due to its moral background. Rembrandt himself painted a '' Return of the Prodigal Son'' in 1669. The left side of the canvas was cut, perhaps by the artist himself, to remove secondary characters and focus the observer's attention on the main theme.

Painting materials

The pigment analysis shows Rembrandt's choice of the usual baroque pigments such as

red ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

lead-tin-yellow Lead-tin-yellow is a yellow pigment, of historical importance in oil painting, sometimes called the "Yellow of the Old Masters" because of the frequency with which it was used by those famous painters. Nomenclature The name lead-tin yellow ...

madder lake Alizarin (also known as 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone, Mordant Red 11, C.I. 58000, and Turkey Red) is an organic compound with formula that has been used throughout history as a prominent red dye, principally for dyeing textile fabrics. Histori ...

and

smalt Cobalt glass—known as "smalt" when ground as a pigment—is a deep blue coloured glass prepared by including a cobalt compound, typically cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate, in a glass melt. Cobalt is a very intense colouring agent and very littl ...

and also his elaborate multilayer painting technique.Rembrandt, Self-Portrait with Saskia (The Prodigal Son)
ColourLex

Sources

External links

* Th
painting
in the State Art Gallery in Dresden
Rembrandt, Self-Portrait with Saskia (The Prodigal Son)
ColourLex

Notes and references

1637 paintings Paintings by Rembrandt Collections of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

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