Object data
pen and brown ink, with brown wash and opaque white (oxidized)
height 222 mm × width 184 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Daniel in the Lions’ Den
Amsterdam, c. 1650
Inscriptions
-
inscribed on verso: centre left (with the sheet turned 90°), in a seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink (as a sum), 290 / 25 / 315; centre, in pencil, Daniel; below that, by Hofstede de Groot, in pencil, f iszox-; lower centre, in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no., twice), Hde 1262 1262
Technical notes
Watermark: Foolscap, close to Heawood, no. 1922 (1651)
Condition
Light foxing throughout1
Provenance
...; purchased from Thomas Humphrey Ward (1845-1926), London, with two other drawings, through the mediation of the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1902;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-17
Credit line: Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)
After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.
Entry
Daniel, the young Israelite whom King Darius the Mede had brought to Babylon, was so favoured by the king that he was given an important position at the court. This made the Median governors jealous, so they tricked the king into issuing a decree that stated that anyone caught praying to any god or human being besides the king for the next thirty days would be thrown to the lions. Daniel continued to pray to his God, forcing Darius, reluctantly, to condemn him to death, for Median and Persian laws were unalterable (Daniel 6:1-28).
The drawing, which was trimmed at the top and the left, depicts the moment when Daniel, having survived a night in the lions’ den, is found alive by the king, who stands above, looking over the edge of the enclosure. The young Daniel kneels with his hands clasped at his breast, his life having been spared owing to his trust in God. The king then commanded all those who had accused Daniel be thrown to the lions, along with their wives and children. In the drawing, a lion stands behind Daniel and nudges him gently (its face now somewhat compromised by oxidized lead white). Two other beasts are resting. A fourth lion roars ferociously, even though the Bible states that God had shut the lions’ mouths (Daniel 6:22). In this way, Rembrandt emphasized the animal’s savageness and the danger that Daniel faced.
A vaguely sketched fifth lion, only partially visible along the trimmed, slightly damaged left edge, is more clearly recognizable in a copy of slightly larger dimensions in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (inv. no. Z 997, 242 x 192 mm). When the Amsterdam drawing was trimmed at the upper edge, one of the figures at the top edge was partially cut off; only the arm of this courtier can be seen in our drawing. The Braunschweig copy elucidates the heavy ‘J’-shaped stroke to the left of the king’s visage: it is the jawline and head of this attendant, in profile to the right, whispering into the ear of the king.
The scene was very broadly drawn by Rembrandt using a reed pen. The innocent, childlike figure of Daniel – especially his face, which radiates his faith in salvation – was effectively conveyed with alternating passages of lights and darks. The enormous enclosure was summarily, but forcefully described, with its two round arches and an entrance gate on the left, inspired by a print of circa 1581 by Johannes Sadeler I.3 The Amsterdam sheet is the only known representation of this subject by Rembrandt, for a drawing of this theme accepted as Rembrandt by Benesch, in the Groninger Museum in Groningen (inv. no. 1931.0184),4 with a standing lion that corresponds, in reverse, to that in our sheet, was correctly catalogued by Jaap Bolten as merely ‘School of Rembrandt’.5 Another drawing of Daniel in the Lions’ Den by a follower of Rembrandt, in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (inv. no. WA1957.37),6 was likewise derived to some extent from the Amsterdam drawing.
Rembrandt may himself have been inspired by a painting by Rubens, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (DC) (inv. no. 1965.13.1),7 which was made in or before 1615 and which by 1618 was in the possession of the English ambassador in The Hague. Rembrandt probably knew the composition through the reproductive etching by Willem van der Leeuw (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-H-1281).8 In both works, a lion in profile enters the composition from the right edge, and the pose of the nudging lion behind Daniel matches that of the growling beast in the lower left-hand corner of Van der Leeuw’s print.
In drawing the lions, Rembrandt profited from his experience of sketching the animals from life (see inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4524). His earlier depictions of lions, as in the etching with St Jerome as a Hermit, Reading in the Wilderness of 1634 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-49),9 do not really depict this animal in a lifelike way, for he had not yet seen one in the flesh. Once he had studied and sketched them first-hand, he was able to depict them accurately from memory. The subject of Daniel in the Lions’ Den provided a good opportunity for this.
Rembrandt’s pupil Constantijn à Renesse made a drawing of the same subject, a sheet now preserved in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 200 (PK)),10 with Daniel in a similar position, probably based on this version by Rembrandt. An inscription in Renesse’s hand on the verso of the drawing, which is signed and dated 1652 on the recto, states that he showed his first drawing to Rembrandt on 1 October 1649 and that this was his second visit to the master; it is uncertain whether this inscription refers to the actual drawing of Daniel in the Lions’ Den or to another work.11 The question is of some importance, since our drawing of Daniel in the Lions’ Den must have been made about the same time or shortly before Renesse’s drawing. However, the Amsterdam sheet is usually dated just after 1650, the same period as Rembrandt’s stylistically similar drawing of St Jerome Reading in a Landscape in the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg (inv. no. 22414).12 The Hamburg drawing, which features a lion portrayed with a similar broad handling of the pen lines, was a preliminary step towards an etching also usually dated in the early 1650s (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-52).13 If the Rotterdam drawing was indeed the work that Renesse showed to Rembrandt on 1 October 1649, perhaps our drawing, the Hamburg study and the related etching should also be dated no later than the third quarter of 1649.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1262; W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 210 (c. 1652); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 64 (1652-53); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 887 (c. 1652); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. The Hague 1985, no. 24, with earlier literature; Sumowski, Drawings, IX (1985), p. 4818, under no. 2145; J. Giltaij, The Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1988, p. 82, under no. 23; M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 183, under no. 88; A. Blankert, ‘Rembrandt and his Followers: Notes on Connoisseurship, its Potential and Pitfalls’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Rembrandt and his Pupils: Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum Stockholm 2-3 October 1992, Stockholm 1993, pp. 77-97, p. 157; A. Blankert et al., Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria)/Canberra (National Gallery of Australia) 1997-98, no. 86; S. Hautekeete, with P. Schatborn, Tekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn leerlingen in de verzameling van Jean de Grez, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2005, p. 69, under no. 21, fig. 2; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 96-97, fig. 93; G. Schwartz, De grote Rembrandt, Zwolle 2006, p. 124, fig. 213; T. Döring, G. Bungarten and C. Pagel, Aus Rembrandts Kreis: Die Zeichnungen des Braunschweiger Kupferstichkabinetts, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 2006, pp. 110-11, under no. 41, fig. 1; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, pp. 185-86, fig. 30.1; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, coll. cat. 2 vols., Bussum/Paris 2010, p. 89, under no. 22, n. 16; A. Stefes, Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, III: Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1850, coll. cat. 3 vols., Cologne and elsewhere 2011, p. 455, under no. 847*, n. 9; RRP V (2011), pp. 240 and 242, figs. 230 and 234
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Amsterdam, c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28542
(accessed 29 April 2024 15:48:42).