?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Christ Preaching (La Petit Tombe).
Etching and drypoint, circa 1652. 155x208 mm; 6 1/8x8 1/4 inches, narrow margins. Usticke's first state (of 3), before the Watelet retouching. Arms of Amsterdam watermark (Ash/Fletcher 1, they date most impressions of various subjects by Rembrandt with this watermark from the 1650s). A superb, richly-inked "white sleeve" impression with very strong contrasts and no sign of wear, with burr on the robe of the man with his back turned lower left and on the diagonal shading below his feet.
Though technically less complex and with less of the grandeur of the perhaps better recognized Christ Healing the Sick (Hundred Guilder Print), circa 1643-49, this etching depicts a similar subject and is commonly seen as being among the most important of Rembrandt's New Testament scenes. The less formal approach to the subject is evident in the figure of the doodling child sprawled out on the floor below Christ and by the inclusion of just a pair of sandaled feet (the legs attached to them barely suggested at the edge of the composition) at the extreme lower right corner. Bartsch 67; Biörklund 52-2; Hollstein (White and Boon) 67.
