Watermark: Lion with a sword and arrows within a garland

Light foxing throughout¹¹Typical of most drawings formerly in the collection of Hofstede de Groot, which at some point during his ownership were stored in unfavourably damp conditions.

…; purchased from the dealer M. Nijhoff, The Hague, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1905;²²Hofstede de Groot notes, KB. by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930

Object number: RP-T-1930-8

Credit line: Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague

The Canaanite army general Sisera was defeated by the Israelite forces under the command of the Israelite ruler and judge Barak and the prophetess Deborah, who had foretold that the general would die at the hands of a woman. After his defeat, Sisera fled to the settlement of Heber the Kenite, where he was received by Heber’s wife, Jael, who lured him into her tent. She gave him milk to drink and offered to hide him under a blanket, but after he fell asleep, she drove a tent peg through his temple all the way into the ground (Judges 4:18-21).

In the drawing, Sisera lies asleep on his shield next to a chair from which his helmet hangs; Jael is about to drive the peg through his head. By placing the helmet at the same height as Jael’s head and the hammer in her hand, Rembrandt used this head-covering – which normally has a protective function – as a symbol of Sisera’s impotence. It is contrasted with the hammer, the symbol of Jael’s power, a power that she is about to wield.

The Bible relates that Jael covered Sisera with a blanket, but this is never shown in the pictorial tradition of this subject. On the other hand, as in Rembrandt’s drawing, pieces of the general’s armour – shield or helmet – are often represented in prints, such as the woodcut by Lucas van Leyden (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-1803),³³B. 7; Jonkheer J.L.A.A.M. van Ryckervorsel, Rembrandt en de traditie, Rotterdam 1932; J.P. Filedt Kok, B. Cornelis and A. Smits, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Lucas van Leyden, Rotterdam/Amsterdam 1996, no. 182. Contrary to what is often stated, Lucas’s woodcut did not influence Rembrandt. the engraving by Philips Galle from his series of six Celebrated Women from the Old Testament (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1961-449)⁴⁴ M. Sellink and M. Leesberg, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Philips Galle, 4 pts., Rotterdam 2001, no. 127. The gesture of Jael’s raised arm is quite similar to Rembrandt’s version. and the small woodcut ornamental border by Christoffel van Sichem III in the Biblia Sacra, published by Jan Moretus in Antwerp in 1657.⁵⁵Hollstein, XXVII, no. 49; 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, fig. 46a; Van Ryckervorsel, in Jonkheer J.L.A.A.M. van Ryckervorsel, Rembrandt en de traditie, Rotterdam 1932, noticed the similarity, but contrary to what he claims, Van Sichem’s print does not seem to be directly derived from Lucas’s print. Although the shield is missing from Van Sichem’s print, it seems generally to have been the compositional model that most influenced Rembrandt. The inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions shows that he owned a few helmets, including a Japanese helmet (‘een Japanse hellemet’), and this could have been the model for the one in the drawing.⁶⁶RD 1656/12, nos. 157-59; a similar helmet appears in a engraving of Sleeping Mars by Jacob de Gheyn III; J.P. Filedt Kok and M. Leesberg, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: The De Gheyn Family, 2 pts., Rotterdam 2000, no. 18.

The figures are drawn with a reed pen, using broad, confident strokes. In a few places, the lines have been widened into shadows, which are indicated elsewhere with a few short lines of hatching. The lines, varied in tone and sometimes rather angular, give a convincing picture of the attitudes of the figures: the twist in the assassin Jael’s body and the weary limbs of the sleeping Sisera. At one point, too much ink flowed from Rembrandt’s pen, obscuring Jael’s face, so the artist corrected this area with opaque white.

A comparison with a drawing Rembrandt made of the same subject a decade earlier, at the end of the 1640s, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (inv. no. WA1950.51),⁷⁷Benesch, no. 622a. shows a substantial difference in style and conception. Here a slightly later moment in the story is shown, one that does not occur in the biblical text: Sisera is awake and defending himself – a highly charged dramatic scene, strengthened by the various positions in which his arms have been drawn. Sisera’s raised leg resembles not only a motif in the drawing of Cain Slaying Abel, in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (inv. no. KKS10094),⁸⁸Benesch, no. 860; 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, no. 2. but also a detail in the 1636 painting of the Blinding of Samson, in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main (inv. no. 1383).⁹⁹RRP III (1989), no. A 116; RRP VI (2015), no. 148. In our drawing, which was made about ten years later, there is a feeling of quiet tension in the simple triangular composition of the figures, which is, of course, appropriate for the slightly earlier part of the story Rembrandt has chosen.

Another rendering of the subject by Rembrandt, probably made about the same time as the Amsterdam drawing, is lost but known from three other school versions: one in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (inv. no. Z 345),¹⁰¹⁰T. Döring, G. Bungarten and C. Pagel, Aus Rembrandts Kreis: Die Zeichnungen des Braunschweiger Kupferstichkabinetts, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 2006, no. A11 (as copy). one in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. 22986)¹¹¹¹F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre. Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord, III: École hollandaise: Rembrandt, ses élèves, ses imitateurs, ses copistes, coll. cat. Paris 1933, no. 1228 (as pupil or copy, c. 1650). and one in the Folkestone Museum (inv. no. F3644/51).¹²¹²A.M. Hind, Rembrandt: Being the Substance of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Delivered before Harvard University, 1930-1931, Oxford/London 1932, pl. XI; Lugt (pupil or copy); A.E. Popham, ‘Old Master Drawings at the Royal Academy’, The Burlington Magazine 104 (1962), no. 707, pp. 69-70 (original). Here Jael is approaching from the right, while Sisera is seen from behind. The helmet and shield are not shown.

Peter Schatborn, 2017

C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1253; W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 129 (c. 1650); 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. 71 (c. 1659); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1042 (1659-60); 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. 46, with earlier literature; RRP V (1989), p. 232, fig. 213; B.C. van den Boogert (ed.), Rembrandts schatkamer, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1999, p. 124, fig. 82; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 106-07, fig. 102; P. Schatborn, C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken and H. Grollemund, Rembrandt dessinateur: Chefs-d’oeuvres des collections en France, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 2006-07, p. 172, under no. 62, fig. 70; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 85-86, under no. 21; J. Bikker et al. Late Rembrandt, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), 2014-15, pp. 243-244, 304, no. 114.

P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Jael Killing Sisera, Amsterdam, c. 1658 - c. 1659', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200117996