Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

Carl and Rose Hirschler, Amsterdam and Haarlem (L. 633a).

C. White and K.G. Boon, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, Amsterdam 1969, vol. XVIII, pp. 43–44, no. 78 (other impressions illustrated);

E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt the Printmaker, London 2000, pp. 297-300, no. 73 (other impressions illustrated);

E. Hinterding and J. Rutgers, The New Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts: 1450–1700, Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel 2013, vol. II, pp. 222–24, no. 274 (other impressions illustrated).

'There were a few times when Rembrandt felt the urge to make a print with the impact of a painting, and the Three Crosses of 1653 belongs unequivocally to this category.' ¹

Christ Crucified between the two Thieves, along with Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo) executed two years later in 1655, represents the culminating masterpiece of Rembrandt’s graphic œuvre and one of the most prodigious artistic feats of his career. The monumental scale and visionary quality of these two prints, created in the artist’s full maturity and displaying the expressive powers of drypoint with breathtaking virtuosity, make them equal in importance to the artist’s autograph paintings. Arguably it was not until Picasso’s grand and densely worked intaglio plate, the Minotauromachy of 1935, that such a tour-de-force was created in the history of printmaking.

Most likely conceived as pendants, Christ Presented to the People and Christ Crucified between two Thieves are the only biblical subjects Rembrandt executed entirely in drypoint, a technique in which he scored directly on the copper plate with his needle, without using acid. The rich, velvety burr thrown up in the process is as palpable as the thick impastos of Rembrandt’s painting, producing vibrant pictorial effects of chiaroscuro. In the first three states of their evolution, the dimensions of the two plates were virtually identical, which corroborates the view that Rembrandt designed them as pendants, a combined magnum opus. In contrast to the greater body of old master prints, designed to be viewed up close, the rich, painterly effects of both works are best appreciated when seen from a distance, just as Rembrandt’s thickly impastoed paintings of his maturity are. There is physical evidence that an impression of a fourth state in a Dutch private collection was hung on a wall, as markings on the verso were almost certainly caused by the print being stuck down on linen, to facilitate wall hanging.

During nearly three decades of printmaking, Rembrandt had often retouched his etched plates with a drypoint needle, or engraving burin, to accent key points in the composition. By the 1650s, his greatest prints were worked entirely in drypoint. While this technique gave him more immediate control of his drawing on the copper plate, its surface wore away during printing far more quickly than with an etching. Rembrandt clearly regarded the third state of the plate as finished, since he signed and dated it 1653 at the bottom (fig. 1).

Rembrandt has pictured here the very moment of Christ's death, according to the gospel of Luke:

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Truly, this man was the son of God.” When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. (Luke 23: 44–50).

In the third state, a flood of supernatural light illuminates the ground immediately around the cross. Dark shadows fill the four corners, and the two figures hurrying away in the foreground are silhouetted against the brightness. Christ’s followers and mourners share the divine shaft of light which bathes Christ, or are picked out with light in the foreground, while the Roman soldiers remain in shadow at the left, except the centurion who kneels with arms outstretched before Christ as he undergoes a conversion at that very moment.

Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross in Munich (fig. 2), painted twenty years earlier in 1633, is only one of a few comparable paintings treating a related subject. In an analogous manner to The Three Crosses, the figure of Christ is illuminated with a pool of light, while the areas of thick impasto—for example on the rich red and gold encrusted garb of John—are analogous to the rich, velvety burr that suffuses the present impression.

Rembrandt was faced with a problem in both Ecce Homo (fig. 3) and Christ Crucified between two Thieves: the loss of the sumptuous burr that prints to such dramatic effect in the early pullings of the prints. In both plates, Rembrandt made away with the crowd, replacing the figures in the Ecce Homo with two dark arches beneath the podium on which Christ stands (fig. 4).

The artist reworked Christ crucified between two Thieves so absolutely that it used to be thought that the fourth state was a separate plate altogether. Although it is generally assumed that the artist largely burnished away the first version of the Three Crosses before embarking on the new composition, a close examination of the maculature of the fourth state has revealed that Rembrandt mainly removed only the burr from the lines, leaving the first version essentially intact. This makes it clear that the dense web of drypoint and burin lines with which Rembrandt covered the whole plate in the fourth state served a dual purpose: to lend the scene drama, and to conceal the remnants of the earlier work as far as possible.² New vertical lines are scored through the sky, creating curtains of dramatic darkness and aptly casting the impenitent crucified thief—to Christ’s left—into complete blackness.

However, while the present impression resonates with all the terrifying power that is sought after in the fourth state, it retains a distinct transparency in the shadows and legibility—for example in the group of figures to the right—testifying to the individual nature of each impression of the ‘great prints of his maturity, where different impressions from the same plate can reveal striking variations as Rembrandt sought to extract every expressive possibility from the plate. The careful inking and wiping of the plate, the choice of paper, became events of almost sacramental importance…’³

The drastic changes to both the Ecce Homo and The Three Crosses not only provided a solution to an immediate problem, but gave the artist an opportunity for radical self-expression, while bringing spiritual significance to the narrative. In the Ecce Homo, the dark arches become prescient of underground tombs, while in Christ crucified between the two Thieves, the fall of darkness becomes an apocalyptic event. Scratched burr-suffused scorings at the lower right which seem to project inwards give an impression of a rush of movement—suggestive of the earthquake that shook the land in the aftermath of Christ’s death (Matthew 27: 50–56). In The Three Crosses, such ‘boldly assertive non-representational markings and scorings serve as undisguised traces of [the artist’s] intense artistic and contemplative activity,'⁴ while the Ecce Homo remains representational in its re-worked state.

Such a dramatic transformation in both the Ecce Homo and Christ crucified between two Thieves is only seen rarely—for example in two impressions of Rembrandt’s Entombment (figs 5 and 6). Viewed side by side, it is hardly believable that they are printed from the same plate. While the whole scene of the first state pulsates with light, the artist has left veils of ink on the plate of varying depths in the fourth state, such that the tones span the whole spectrum from the deep black of the background through the penumbra in which the onlookers stand, to the radiant light emanating from the blank paper constituting the figure of Christ, where the plate was cleanly wiped.

Viewing the two states of Christ Crucified between two Thieves concurrently produces a cinematic experience, as if one is watching successive images in a film; the scene, bathed in light, is suddenly plunged into darkness, while a new figure, a horseman wearing a tall headdress, arrives from stage left—a quotation from a medal by the Renaissance master, Pisanello. Just as both states should be seen side by side so that the narrative unfolds before the viewer’s eye, so should the Ecce Homo and Christ Crucified between two Thieves be seen together as two pendants, and two successive scenes of the Passion of Christ, which Rembrandt intended them to be.

¹ E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt the Printmaker, London 2000, p. 301.

² Hinterding et al, 2000, p. 303.

³ R. Godfrey in A Collection of Rembrandt Etchings, Artemis and Sotheby's, London 2007.

⁴ M. Deutsch Carroll, 'Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker', in The Art Bulletin, December 1981, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 585–610, published by CAA.