Artist: Title: Death of the Virgin Bartsch number: B99 Date: 1639 Media: Etching and drypoint Size: 40.96 cm (16.8 in) x 31.43 cm (12.4 in)

In Death of the Virgin, one of his largest etchings, Rembrandt blended a typical aspect of Catholic art with a secular deathbed scene in a theatrical Baroque composition. The Virgin lies in an ornate, canopied bed surrounded by the apostles, priests, and other mourners. Above the bed, Rembrandt included heavenly beings in the celestial realm, presumably ready to receive the Virgin. These factors along with the figures’ expressions and a clear mastery of all add drama to the etching and cleverly pull the eye into the composition. The inclusion of secular figures in the etching demonstrated Rembrandt’s embrace of reality and transcendence of tradition and religious restrictions.

Contextual Information Artist’s Biography—1639 Although Rembrandt was a Protestant, the Virgin Mary’s In 1639, this etching’s year of production, Rembrandt assumption into heaven was a purchased a house in Sint-Anthonisbreestaat, a popular location for common subject in Western Catholic contemporary artists. Initially, Rembrandt could not afford the house art. Her assumption, in fact, is not but he was allowed to pay it off in installments. Despite this found in any of the Gospels, but only arrangement and his desperate attempts, Rembrandt was not able to exists in the writings of other apostles. pay off the mortgage, a contributing factor to his eventual financial Caravaggio’s treatment of the subject ruin. Rembrandt and wife Saskia, as well as their son, Titus, lived in (Death of the Virgin, 1604-1606) was the house from 1639 to 1658 and today it serves as the said to influence this etching and, like Rembrandthius Museum—better known as the Rembrandt House— Caravaggio, Rembrandt did not show in . The same year he bought the house, he completed his the moment of assumption. Instead he Passion Series (etching of Descent from the Cross from this series can showed the moment of her death. be found in the MoFA exhibition) and was awarded a commission to During the 16th and 17th centuries, paint his famous painting, Night Watch. church scholars debated whether she was dead or alive at the moment of the assumption. The general Related Terminology consensus, contrary to Caravaggio’s

and Rembrandt’s depictions, was that Chiaroscuro: the interplay of lights and darks that create volume, she was alive. depth, and spatial relations as well as help shape the overall

composition of a work. Drypoint: this printmaking technique uses a hard-pointed needle with a sharp metal (typically steel) or diamond point to incise an Drypoint image into a plate. This technique allows the artist the freedoms provided by drawing tools.

References Crocker Art Museum. “The Death of the Virgin, 1639.” http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocChicago_Bibliography.html#online One Kings Lane. “Rembrandt, The Death of the Virgin 1639.” https://www.onekingslane.com/product/13275/611416?f=search_guest Barker, Mary Christine. “Transcending Tradition: Rembrant’s Death of the Virgin 1639: A Re-Vision.” Abstract. Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, 34, no 2 (2010): 138-161. Maney Publishing.

Completed Summer 2013, Laura Saladin