Richard Ford Heath

“ This sad work has taken time, and the cold, grey dawn has come. With heavy hearts the mourners raise the bier, that they may carry its burden to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. We see them coming slowly round the rock, in which is the grave, where no man had yet been laid. How terrible is the rigidity of death! It is no question that life has forever gone.
We enter, with the women and the disciples, into the sepulchre. It is a great cave, and the light is dispersed over the interior; but as the body descends a gradual withdrawal of light takes place. ”

“ The light the shepherds have brought overpowers the fainter glimmer of the candle Joseph is using, and the stable seems at once darker and lighter. The rustic visitors approach, and leaning against a bar which protects the stall in which Mary lies, they look lovingly down on the babe, which the mother, now sitting up, has taken on her lap. Joseph, a simple old man, regards the little company of humble souls who are worshipping the infant with a kind of mild wonder; Mary, who is always represented as her husband's intellectual superior, receives the rustic homage with calm joy. ”

“ Mingling with the multitude are some Pharisees, teachers of the law, more than one of whom appears half converted. In the midst of the crowd Jesus preserves all the serenity of the just man, the earnestness and involuntary majesty of a God. His figure in the centre of the composition stands out powerfully against the dark wall; all the lines of the picture lead to it, every look, every action point to Him. ”

“ In one picture we have the moment when they are actually raising the cross to which the victim has already been attached. Nothing can well exceed the anguish of the suffering depicted, the beginning of the torture which is to end in death. Among the men who are actually engaged in raising the cross of Calvary is Rembrandt himself, and no one works more energetically; touching acknowledgment by the young artist of his own sinfulness and his own share in the sacrifice for the sin of the world. ”

“ He does not look down on the crowd with the air of a hero or a martyr, but offering up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to him who is able if he will to save him from death. The dark faces and cruel weapons which form a frame to the spotless figure on which the principal light falls are wonderfully managed to give the utmost effect by contrast. ”

“ He saw men as Shakespeare saw them, only more profoundly, for Shakespeare leaves almost entirely out of consideration a very important and universal side of human experience, the relation of the soul to God. Rembrandt, on the contrary, pierces not only to the innermost hearts of men, but to the most secret acts of their lives. ”

“ The pilgrimage, the exile — fate of all God's elect — has commenced. Joseph places the mother and child on an ass, and gently leads them: we see the good old man, with his crowned hat, the personification of some miller or baker of Leiden, trudging along an unknown path which does not lead home. How wearily he walks, and how the mother, wrapped in a great mantle, cradles the babe to her bosom! The night has come, and they stop to rest in a corner of the road. Joseph sits upon the bank, his lanthorn lights up his head. Mary rests against his legs. Nothing can be simpler ”

“ Nothing better shows Rembrandt's masterly realization of the scene than that, though it is typical of so many which have taken place throughout the history of the world, he has yet given it a unique character, inasmuch as it is impossible to regard the sufferer as a martyr for religion or politics, or for any idea or cause whatsoever. The sufferer is the martyr of humanity; he dies because he is the only true man in that howling throng of cruelty and weakness. ”

“ The home is that of a Dutch artisan of Rembrandt's own days; the apartments spacious and airy, the height of the ceiling, the arched window, the handsome chimney-piece, suggest that the toiling artisan has become the tenant of a dwelling once the abode of the great.
How happy a scene lights it up this bright afternoon, for the painter has chosen the best hour of the day, that moment when the sun in Holland is fullest and clearest. [2] He has made the warm air and light to enter through the open window and to circulate through the whole house. ”

“ What delicacy and what truth in these different shades of faith; language can scarcely render them! however the artist makes them felt. Look at the old woman with her lean arms and wrinkled hands, who with all her soul implores the Master to cure her daughter lying at His feet. ”

“ Joseph, with careful prudence, tries the depth of the water. He leads the way. Night a gain approaches; the last rays of the sun disappear in the distance; the after-glow has gone, and gradually the obscurity becomes so intense that even the lanthorn seems extinguishing. Nothing is seen save three heads moving through the darkness. ”

“ For the Christ looks like one who has lately passed through great physical suffering. He is plainly a being who is far more soul than body, and whom you might expect in a moment to prove but a vision. He seems to see what no one else sees. He has exactly the look of one of those men or women whom you are compelled to love because they are so near to God.
In a second picture, where Jesus is departing, Rembrandt does not appear to have been so successful; but in a final one, which is only an etching, the artist has surpassed himself. ”

“ A group immediately in the foreground represents all the various elements of the crowd. One is proving to three men that Jesus ought to be crucified, the first doubts its justice, the second is half convinced, the third is indifferent, but would not have it otherwise, since the excitement of such scenes sends a thrill of excitement through his dull frame. On a gallery above we see a crowd of faces, among whom Rembrandt appears again as a soldier with an awful instrument of torture in his hand. ”

“ There is a type in the child, the same as we observe in the Joseph, a type indeed which follows us everywhere and under every form, except in that of the consecrated Christ. This type we should, were we dilating simply on Rembrandt's art, have abundant opportunity to show is no other than Rembrandt himself, — new proof that his designs were evolved from his own inner consciousness, from that storehouse of images gathered up in his brain, the treasures of generations, and of his own immense genius and observation. ”

“ Abraham is the type of the man of faith, the poor suffering tradesman or artisan, who over and over again in the generations just prior to that of Rembrandt had been called to sacrifices terrible to flesh and blood, involving not only flight from the land of his nativity, but the offering up of his dearest treasures on the altar of what was often a truly fanatical conscience. ”

“ How different is the case with Rembrandt! for him the moral intention is the primary object; art is only the means. When he comes to treat this great subject, he follows it with a spirit as sympathetic as the disciples themselves. But at the very outset we are struck with an omission which shows from how utterly different a standpoint he viewed it from that of the great artists of the Renaissance.
Lionardo da Vinci, Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne have all left masterpieces representing the Last Supper. It seems just the scene for the brush or etching-needle of Rembrandt. ”

“ For this universal reign of justice, after which the common people everywhere so persistently aspire, always appears to the governing classes in a light either ridiculous or terrifying. As long as it is an ideal, they mock it as impracticable; directly it seeks to realize itself in acts, they crush it as social anarchy. ”

“ A woman, evidently one of those unhappy ones whose touch the Pharisee thought polluting, is crouching at the feet of the Saviour; near her, leaning against the stone, his face agonized, is a poor wretch, suffering the intolerable conviction of sin; close to him, with her back to the spectator, but meekly squatting on the ground, sits a well-dressed mother, her babe in her arms; an elderly man, drawn as by some fascination, has left his seat, and is approaching nearer and nearer to the preacher; on the bench against the wall sits a row of men, in each of whom conviction reveals itself. ”

“ The real life which animates the great soul of this people's painter is seen in the fact that whereas he can be at times absolutely revolting, here in this picture of an open grave is nothing ghastly, nothing but what is attractive. ”

“ Mark how differently faith displays itself in the men and in the women, in the old people and in the children; look at that mother who carries an infant in her arms; her little son, a lad of ten years, pulling her by the dress, and showing her the Christ, seems to say, "There is the Man who will make baby well." But the artist has not forgotten the men in easy circumstances who have come through sympathy or curiosity. In the foreground stands a corpulent Pharisee, his hands behind his back, looking contemptuously at the credulous crowd of miserable wretches who follow the Christ ”

“ Of the Good Samaritan, a fine painting exists in the Louvre, and a fine etching may be seen in collections, but the painting has the pre-eminence in intensity of feeling. The moment chosen in both is the same — the arrival of the Samaritan with his charge at the inn.
It is evening: the sun has just set, and its last rays light up the figure of the Samaritan, who has ascended the steps of the inn, and is arranging with the hostess. Two servants have assisted the sufferer from off his horse, one holds him under the arms, while the other, a young lad, supports his legs. ”

“ I have looked at the impressions of Rembrandt's rare and precious etching of "Christ Healing the Sick ,"to be seen in the print-room of the British Museum, and in the Cabinet des Estampes at Paris, and I can find no words more suitable to describe it than those of Charles Blanc, who has made so perfect and loving a study of Rembrandt's work: [3] —
The theatre of the action is exactly what it ought to be. Jesus Christ is followed by a crowd of the poor, the unhappy, the sick, the afflicted. They enter with their Master into an old building, perhaps a ruin. ”

“ How few are the pictures of the old or new masters which have ever touched our hearts! We may think the drawing fine, the coloring magnificent, and the tout ensemble superb, but have they awakened a shadow of affection for him to whose glory they have been made? ”

“ But the representation of this scene in which the genius of Rembrandt comes out most characteristically, is the one called "The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight." It is an intensely dark night, and only the lower portion of the cross is seen on the brow of a hill; the body has been lowered into a shroud, and a man below is preparing a bier to receive it. A brilliant light falls on the principal group, and the weird effect of the scene is enhanced by a white hand held up in the thick obscurity on which the light reflects. ”

“ And so, too, in the minds of many who sincerely love justice, but who set an undue value on accepted notions of truth and the established order of society, the mountain of prejudice against the popular ideal of Christ's doctrine rises higher from age to age.
Perhaps a view of it through the softened medium of the mind of a man of genius and a great painter and humorist may tempt such persons to throw aside prejudice and to study for themselves the thought of the common people in all ages. ”

“ From the moment he first depicts the babe lying in the stall of an ox, among the dark and gloomy shadows of a stable, to the hour when, still arrayed in the homely garments of the poor, he alternately consorts with angels and with men who wear patched clothes and clouted shoes, he represents Jesus as the poor man, the companion of the suffering children of want. He is the man who goes about doing good, and has nowhere to lay his head. It is this brotherhood in poverty which he loves most to display in the Saviour's character. ”

“ With half-closed eyes, cruel, hard face, the employer, grasping tight hold of his purse, refuses even to look at the laborer, who, in a deprecating manner, lifts his hat and humbly asks for justice. "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" ”

“ There are periods in the history of men, periods in the history of nations, when they are in love with death, when to cease to be is the one great boon they desire. It was not so with Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. The world in fact was just born again, and never in human history had its life been fuller or more vigorous. ”