Christ drives the money changers out of the temple

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Christ drives the money changers out of the temple (Rembrandt van Rijn)
Christ drives the money changers out of the temple
Rembrandt van Rijn , 1624/1625
Oil on oak
43.1 x 32 cm
Pushkin Museum , Moscow

Christ drives the money changers out of the temple is an oil painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn . The work isexecuted inlandscape format on oak and was one of the earliest works by the young Rembrandt painted around 1624 or 1625. In terms of time and style, it is closely related to Rembrandt's The Five Senses , which it also resembles in terms of the enlargement of the paintings in the 18th century. The existing date 1626 has been applied to the dry paint. For a long time it led to a later classification in Rembrandt's work, but does not prevent the picture from being created earlier.

description

The painting shows the cleaning of the temple in Jerusalem, as it is described in all four Gospels ( Mt 21.12ff  EU , Mk 11.15ff  EU , Lk 19.45ff  EU and Joh 2.13-22  EU ). The violence of the depiction, with a Jesus who raised the scourge to blow, corresponds to the depiction in the Gospel according to John .

In the foreground, three money changers are sitting at a table. The right one is half bald with a gray fringe of hair and a full beard. He is dressed in brown and has his eyes fixed on the table on which he is gathering money with his bare left arm. The money changer on the left looks younger, he has a mustache, wears a dark cap and is clad in a fur-trimmed tappert . He holds his left hand protectively over his money lying on the table and grabs his wallet with his right hand. He has feared his gaze upwards, where the angry Jesus stands behind him on the left with the scourge raised to blow. The third man at the table sits a little further back in the middle and holds both hands protectively in front of his head and face. He wears a multi-colored turban, his neckband identifies him as a soldier or temple guard. A fourth man, also wearing a turban-like headgear, pushes his way between a pillar and the men seated at the table. With his left hand he is holding a sack thrown over his right shoulder. A fifth participant can only see a small part of the head in the background and the raised hand with which he is holding a basket of poultry carried on his head. Jesus who determines the event is on the left in the background. He is dressed in purple and dark green, has dark hair parted in the middle and no beard. His expression and posture express anger and determination, the scourge in his right hand raised to strike.

The composition of the picture with the densely packed, expressive faces and arms in motion is very unusual, but the strong colors and clothing of the figures show parallels to other early works by Rembrandt, beginning with The Five Senses . The movements of the figures shown resemble some of the actors depicted in Rembrandt's early paintings The Stoning of St. Stephen , History Painting with Self-Portrait of the Painter and Balaam and the Donkey . In this respect, Jesus with the scourge corresponds to the stony man depicted in the middle or Balaam with the raised whip, while his facial features correspond to the main character in the history painting . The timidly upward looking money changer is reminiscent of the secretary in the history painting and Anna in Tobias suspects his wife of theft , both from 1626. The extremely compact representation is characteristic of the first painting by the young Rembrandt on the one hand, and it was found in his later paintings on the other Work no continuation.

State before the restoration from 1930 to 1931, with the parts added in the 18th century

The signature is located directly above the turban of the fleeing money changer on the column, it was only discovered during the restoration carried out from 1930 to 1931. The monogram was scratched into the almost dry paint. It is read differently as RH 1626 or RHF 1626 and was considered authentic by the experts at the Rembrandt Research Project as early as 1982. However, Rembrandt had repeatedly applied his monogram and the current year to works that had been completed a long time ago. In its execution, the signature resembles Rembrandt's painting Tobias Suspected of Theft from 1626, and it is no longer in doubt today.

The painting has the format 43.1 × 32 cm and is painted with oil paint on oak wood with vertical grain. The base consists of a single board, the back of which has been planed down to a thickness of four millimeters and varnished. At the time of its identification as a work by Rembrandt in 1924, the painting had been enlarged to 53.2 × 40.8 cm from its original state. As with Rembrandt's earliest works, four pictures from the cycle The Five Senses , ledges were attached to all four sides. Here, too, the depiction has been supplemented, a figure with a straw hat has been added to the right edge of the picture, the table has been extended downwards and the purse is now fully depicted, on the left the robe of Jesus has been completed and the column above has been extended. In order to achieve a closed overall impression, parts of the original painting were also painted over.

The picture is in good overall condition. Only at the bottom left, on the sleeve of the man with the fur-trimmed tappert, is a small retouching. The claim made by the Soviet art historian Kati M. Jegorowa in 1971 that the painting was considerably damaged was probably based on the incorrect interpretation of X-rays. The sleeve and cap of the aforementioned money changer and the red paint on the shoulder of the old man in the foreground have some craquelure .

background

Two studies of the head of an old man , Rembrandt van Rijn, brown ink on paper, 9 × 14.5 cm, 1624/1625, J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles
The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, Jan van der Straet, oil on panel, 370 × 260 cm, 1572, Santo Spirito, Florence Christ drives the money changers out of the temple, Philipp Galle, copper engraving, around 1600
The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple , Jan van der Straet , oil on panel, 370 × 260 cm, 1572, Santo Spirito , Florence
Christ drives the money changers out of the temple , Philipp Galle , copper engraving, around 1600

In 1620 Rembrandt began a three and a half year training with Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburgh in Leiden, who is known for his depictions of hell . In 1624 Rembrandt went to Amsterdam to study for six months with Pieter Lastman , who exerted a greater artistic influence on Rembrandt than van Swanenburgh. The stoning of St. Stephen was considered the earliest surviving work of the young Rembrandt for decades, as his monogram and the date of 1625 are generally accepted as authentic. His five-part cycle The Five Senses is now classified as an earlier work. Due to the subsequent dating to 1626, the expulsion from the temple in Rembrandt's early work was classified far too late. For stylistic reasons and because of the similar enlargement, the painting is likely to have been made immediately after the cycle, possibly before the stoning of St. Stephen .

For Christ drives the money changers out of the temple, there is a draft sketch made in brown ink on paper with Two Studies of the Head of an Old Man , which Rembrandt implemented in the figure of a money changer in the foreground on the right. The drawing was in private Dutch ownership until 1981 and was purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1983 . The question of where Rembrandt could have borrowed his dense pictorial composition from half-figures has preoccupied art history for a long time. Kurt Bauch initially saw parallels with the Utrecht Caravaggists , but the composition of the images differs significantly from the way this group worked. Bauch later named the expulsion from the temple painted by Jan van der Straet in 1572 as a model. Rembrandt was probably familiar with a copper engraving by Philipp Galles based on the painting or a drawing by van der Straet.

reception

The first publication on this painting comes from the Russian art historian WAS Schtawinski, who in a magazine article attributed it to the Rembrandt school. It was first introduced into art historical literature by Kurt Bauch in his 1924 essay On the Knowledge of Rembrandt's Early Works as a work of Rembrandt. In 1935 it was included in his catalog raisonné of Rembrandt's paintings by the art historian Abraham Bredius with the number 532. His colleague Kurt Bauch accepted the picture as No. 42 in 1966. They were joined by Horst Gerson , who in 1968 assigned the painting No. 5 in his catalog raisonné and continued to list it as No. 532 in his revision of the catalog raisonné by Abraham Bredius. In 1982 the painting was included in the first volume of the Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings by the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) as an early work certainly by Rembrandt with the number A4 . The authors pointed out the authentic signature and date as well as the characteristic execution of the work, although the composition was unusual. Christian Tümpel gave the painting the number 34 in his catalog raisonné, the sixth volume of the Corpus lists it as number 4.

There were repeated doubts about the authenticity of the painting, especially before the restoration carried out in The Hague in 1930, when Western art historians did not yet have access to the picture. Investigations in Moscow in 1956 and 1962 showed that Rembrandt's signature was only contained in the old varnish layer and was therefore not authentic. In 1970, however, it was found that the signature had been scratched into the partially dried paint layer and that the depressions contained old paint particles. Around 1955, the art historian Gerard Knuttel criticized the attribution of a number of Rembrandt's early works, mainly for reasons of style criticism, but in the case of expulsion also because of the signature and date , which he believed were not authentic. His colleague Vitale Bloch, who himself was involved in the discovery of several Rembrandts, then criticized him for copying Rembrandt's works because he did not like them.

Provenance

The painting was in the private collection of the Moscow perfumer and art collector Henri Brocard in the late 19th century, who bequeathed it to his widow Charlotte in 1900. In 1903 she opened a private museum. In 1915 it was owned by PC Giraud in Moscow, the Brocards' son-in-law, and was considered a work from the Rembrandt school. From 1918 to 1924 it was part of the State Museum Fund in Moscow. In 1924 it was taken over by the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (Museum of Fine Arts until 1937). From 1930 to 1936 the painting was in The Hague, where it was cleaned and restored from 1930 to 1931.

Further processing of the motif by Rembrandt

Christ drives the money changers out of the temple , etching, 13.6 × 17.7 cm, 1635, Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City

In 1635 Rembrandt made an etching that can be traced back to a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer , but also adopts details from Rembrandt's painting and his models. The plate is still preserved, prints are in several museums.

Exhibitions (chronological)

  • Moscow, Soviet Union. Exhibition Rembrandt van Rijn , 1936
  • Hermitage , Leningrad, Soviet Union. Exhibition on the occasion of Rembrandt's 350th birthday, 1956 to 1957
  • Pushkin Museum , Moscow, Soviet Union. Exhibition on the occasion of Rembrandt's 300th anniversary of death, 1969 to 1970
  • Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister , Kassel , Germany. Exhibition The Young Rembrandt: A Mystery About His Beginnings , November 3, 2001 to January 27, 2002
  • Museo del Prado , Madrid, Spain. Rembrandt exhibition . Pintor de historias , October 15, 2008 to January 6, 2009

Web links

Commons : Christ drives the money changers out of the temple  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vitale Bloch: On the early Rembrandt . In: Oud Holland - Journal for Art of the Low Countries , 1933, Volume 50, No. 1, pp. 97-102, doi: 10.1163 / 187501733X00168 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (ed.): A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. I. 1625-1631. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag, Boston, London 1982, ISBN 978-94-009-7519-4 , Work A 4 Christ driving the moneychangers from the Temple , pp. 88-93.
  3. ^ Ernst van de Wetering: Rembrandt, a biography. In: Gemäldegalerie der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ed.): Rembrandt. Genius in search. DuMont Literature and Art, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-8321-7694-2 , pp. 21–49.
  4. ^ George R. Goldner: European Drawings 1. Catalog of the Collections. J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA 1988, ISBN 0-89236-092-5 , No. 113, Rembrandt van Rijn, Two Studies of the Head of an Old Man , pp. 254-255.
  5. ↑ Rembrandt, Two studies of the head of an old man, voor 1626 on the website of the RKD - Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis , accessed on August 29, 2019.
  6. ↑ Kurt Bauch: On the note of Rembrandt's early works. In: Yearbook of the Prussian Art Collections 1924, Volume 45, pp. 277-280, JSTOR 23349166 .
  7. ↑ Abraham Bredius : Rembrandt. Schilderijen. W. de Haan, Utrecht 1935, digitized version, Heidelberg University Library . German: Rembrandt. Painting. Phaidon-Verlag, Vienna 1935. English: The Paintings of Rembrandt. London 1937 (cited as Bredius ), work no.532.
  8. ↑ Kurt Bauch: Rembrandt. Painting. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1966, reprint 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-005007-3 , No. 42.
  9. ^ Horst Gerson: Rembrandt paintings. Meulenhoff International, Amsterdam 1968. German: Rembrandt paintings. Complete works. Vollmer, Wiesbaden 1968, work no.5.
  10. ↑ Abraham Bredius : Rembrandt. The complete edition of the paintings. Third edition. Revised by Horst Gerson. Phaidon, London 1969, ISBN 0-7148-1341-9 , work no.532.
  11. ^ Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (ed.): A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. VI. Rembrandt's Paintings Revisited. A Complete Survey. Springer Science + Business Media, Dordrecht 2015, ISBN 978-94-017-9173-1 , pp. 480-481.
  12. ^ Christian Tümpel : Rembrandt. Myth and Method. With contributions by Astrid Tümpel . Mercatorfonds, Antwerp 1986, ISBN 90-6153-165-9 , work no.34 .
  13. ↑ Gerard Knuttel: Rembrandt's Earliest Works . In: The Burlington Magazine 1955, Vol. 97, No. 623, pp. 44-47, p. 49, JSTOR 871508 .
    Vitale Bloch: The Problem of the Early Rembrandt (Letter to Knuttel, and his answer). In: The Burlington Magazine 1955, Vol. 97, No. 629, pp. 259-260, JSTOR 871760 .
  14. ↑ Rembrandt, Christ driving the money-changers from the temple (John 2: 13-17), 1626 gedateerd on the website of the RKD - Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis , accessed on August 29, 2019.
  15. ^ Ernst Wilhelm Bredt (Ed.): Rembrandt Bible. Four volumes with 270 illustrations. Volume 3. Hugo Schmidt, Munich 1921, p. 60, digitized and p. 128–129, digitized . http: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Drembrandtbibelvi03remb~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D60~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3Dhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Drembrandtbibelvi04remb~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D128~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D