Watermark: None visible through lining

Light foxing throughout; cuts, lower centre; laid down

…; collection Christian Gottlieb Crusius (c. 1718-83), Dresden (L. 548); …; collection Auguste Grahl (1791-1868), Dresden (L. 1199); his sale, London (Sotheby’s), 27 (28) August 1885 sqq., no. 265, as Rembrandt, £ 1.2.0;¹¹Copy RKD. …; acquired from a private collection, as school of Rembrandt, by Friedrich Maria Albrecht Wilhelm Karl, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Teschen (1856-1936), Vienna, 1912;²²Note RMA. by whom placed in the custody of the Albertina, Vienna, until 1919;³³According to L. 960. …; collection Isaäc de Bruijn (1872-1953) and his wife, Johanna Geertruida de Bruijn-van der Leeuw (1877-1960), Spiez and Muri, near Bern, by 1932;⁴⁴According to Amsterdam 1932, no. 311. by whom donated to the museum, 1949, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1960

Object number: RP-T-1961-84

Credit line: De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland

Christ is being presented by Pilate to the people (John 19:5), who are not depicted here. He is wearing the crown of thorns and a (purple) cloak, as the Bible states, and is guarded by three soldiers under a colonnade. Pilate, next to a balustrade, is raising his hand, saying ‘Behold the Man!’ (‘Ecce Homo’). A dog is standing between Christ and Pilate.

Rembrandt depicted this scene in a number of works. The museum’s drawing is very closely related to the main group in his print of 1655 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1975-1).⁵⁵B. 76; New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 290. Unlike the latter, in the drawing the figure group is seen at an angle from the side, rather than from the front. Some motifs appear in both works, but there are also a few differences: the crown of thorns is not depicted in the etching, nor is the reed sceptre in Christ’s hands, which is held by Pilate in the print. The dog, which does not feature in the print, seems out of place in the drawing.

The drawing belongs to a group made by an unknown pupil active in the early to mid-1650s, a group that also includes Jacob Being Shown Joseph’s Blood-stained Coat (inv. no. RP-T-1930-5) and Jonathan Saying Farewell to David (inv. no. RP-T-1930-11, in the entry to which drawings in this group in other collections are mentioned). A distinctive feature of this hand is the relationship between the light and dark lines: the dark lines seem to have been added to the lighter ones in a slightly different colour of ink. The somewhat shaky handling of line, the flat, stiff figures and the broad hatching are typical of this artist’s draughtsmanship. Pilate’s face is drawn in two or three positions, facing Christ as well as the people. The student tried to conceal these changes with opaque white, a technique also used by Rembrandt to correct his drawings. A later owner of the drawing retouched it with grey, the same colour as the framing line. The drawing has also been damaged by a mount-cutter.

Peter Schatborn, 2018

W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 471 (as Rembrandt, c. 1650); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 927 (as Rembrandt, c. 1653); 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. Amsterdam 1985, no. 72 (as school of Rembrandt, c. 1650), with earlier literature; J. Garff, Drawings by Rembrandt and other 17th-century Dutch Artists in the Department of Prints and Drawings, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Copenhagen 1996, pp. 36 (under no. 11), 42 (under no. 14); C. Dittrich and T. Ketelsen et al., Rembrandt: Die Dresdener Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett) 2004, under no. 31, n. 7 (as school of Rembrandt, c. 1650); 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, p. 215, fig. 36a (as school of Rembrandt, c. 1650); P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 246, cat.nr. 97

P. Schatborn, 2018, 'attributed to Carel van Savoyen, Christ Presented to the People by Pilate, Amsterdam, c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200118023