?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN The Statue (Image Seen by Nebuchadnezzar: Four Illustrations to a Spanish Book).
Etching and drypoint, 1655. 107x64 mm; 4 1/4x2 1/2 inches. Biörklund's fifth state (of 5), with the names of nations added on the head band and limbs; Usticke's fourth state (e) (of 4); New Hollstein's fifth state (of 5). A brilliant, early and richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce etching, with significant burr throughout.
We have not found another impression of this subject, from the quartered plate, at auction in the past 30 years. Usticke notes approximately 30 impressions in private collections while New Hollstein lists another 61 impressions in public collections.
Rembrandt made this and 3 other etched subjects, initially on the same plate, to illustrate the book by his friend, Samuel Manasseh Ben Israel (1604-1657), Piedra gloriosa de la estatua de Nebuchadnesar, written in Spanish and published in Amsterdam in 1655. There are only several impressions known from the uncut plate, which was subsequently cut into four for use by the publisher. Bartsch 36; Biörklund 55-C; Hollstein (White and Boon) 36.
