"On earth we are beggars, as Christ himself was":

The Protestant Background of Rembrandt's Imagery of Poverty, Disability, and Begging

by Robert Baldwin

[published, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, LIV, 3, 1985, 122-135]

For Colin Eisler

At the start of Rembrandt's career, from 1628-1635, vagabonds, cripples, and beggars were by far the most common subject in the artist's prints and drawings. Twenty-four etchings and eleven drawings come down to us. 1 After 1635, such prints fell off drastically though a fair number of vagabond drawings survive from the 1640's. 2 To date, no scholar has satisfactorily explained this sympathetic imagery of poverty and misfortune which was unique among seventeenth-century Dutch artists. In attempting to solve this problem, a number of possibilities present themselves. On the one hand, vagabonds and beggars may have served the inexperienced Rembrandt as free models for him to draw and etch "from life". 3 All of the early vagabond etchings are hasty in execution and tiny in size as one would expect of sketches from life. Some even show the variety of heads on a single plate 1 The etchings are Hind nos. 7-16, 38, 72, 73, 75, 77-81, 116, 142. The drawings are Benesch, 1973 rev. ed., vol. I, fig. nos. 16, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35, 38; II., 229, 255, 260, 261, 262, 263, 270, 401, 402. For Rembrandt's beggars, see Kahren Jones Hellerstedt, "A Traditional Motif in Rembrandt's Etchings: The Hurdy-Gurdy Player," Oud Holland, 16-30; Hessel Miedema, "Grillen van Rembrandt," Proef 3, 1974, 74-75, 84-86; J. Bruyn, "Problemen bij Grillen," Proef 3, 1974, 82-84

2 Hind nos. 164 (1639), 230, 233 (1648), and 259 (1652). Hind 233 is discussed in detail by Hellerstedt, op. cit., Drawimngs include Benesch vol. IV., 852, 874, 894, 908, 911, 913, 917, 918, 933, 934, 935, 936, 940, 941, 946, 948, 949; vol. V., 1437, 1460.

3 Creighton Gilbert tells me that Loreno Lotto also used beggars as models.

typical of the study. 4 As such, these prints can be compared with another common subject in Rembrandt's early etchings, the artist's face. Twenty-seven etched "self- portraits" come down to us from these years, most of them studies in facial expression using an even more convenient model. 5 One print even combined a beggar couple and the artist's face on the same plate. (Fig. 1) 6 If the self-portraits were studies in the "passions", so did the vagabond prints study despair and wretchedness, deepening the handling of these emotions in such ìearly religious works as the Penitent Judas (1629) and Return of the Prodigal Son (1636). 7 Instead of the picturesque, comic, or immoral qualities traditional to European beggar imagery and common in contemporary Dutch art, 8 instead of blaming the beggar for his poverty, Rembrandt used shabbiness and filth to bring out a tragic humanity crushed by impersonal forces. It may be possible to see in these prints an indirect and personal reflection of the charity so important in seventeenth- century Dutch society. Though Protestant charity rejected the quasi-sacramental meaning of Catholic almsgiving, it remained a divinely ordained, moral obligation. 9 Rather than a Catholic giving from one 4

? Hind 41, c. 1631

5

? Hind 2, 2a, 4, 29-36, 54-67, 90, 108. The self-portrait format was the best way to study the relation of inner feeling to outer expression insofar as one could simultaneously know the inner life and see the outer expression.

6

? Hind, 90, c. 1632

7

? For Huygens' praise of despair in the Penitent Judas, see Walter Strauss and Marjon van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents, New York 1979, 68-72. The Prodigal Son is Hind 147.

8

? H. Diane Russell, Jacques Callot, Washington, D. C. 1975, 48-51; Lawrence Silver, "Of Beggars: Lucas van Leyden and Sebastian Brant", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1976, 253-257; Erik von Kraemer, "Le type du faux mendiant dans les littératuresromanes depuis le moyen age jusqu'au XVIIe siècle", Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, XIII, Helsingfors 1944; Elisabeth Sudeck, Bettlerdarstellungen vom Ende des XV. Jahrhunderts bis zu Rembrandt, Strassburg 1931; and Lucinda Kate Reinold, "The Representation of the Beggar as Rogue in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art", Ph.D., Berkeley 1981.

9

? See Carter Lindberg, "There Should Be No Beggars Among Christians: Karlstadt, Luther, and the Origins of Protestant Poor Relief", Church History, 1977, 313-334; Robert M. Kingdon, "Social Welfare in Calvin's Geneva", American Historical Review, 1971, 50-69; R. Mienart, "The Case of the Poor as Seen in Sixteenth Century Protestant Church Ordinances", Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers

individual to another, Dutch charity went into public alms boxes and from there to welfare organizations running poor houses and old people's homes. 10 As the English tourist, William Carr remarked in 1688,

the acts of charity of Amsterdam, the which is so extraordinary that they surpass all other cities of the world, for they are daily and hourly giving to the poor. Every house in Amsterdam hath a box hanging on a chain on which is written 'Think on the poor' so that, when any merchant sells goods they commonly conclude no bargain, but more or less is put in the poor's box; these boxes are locked up by the Deacons, who once a quarter go round the city and take the money out of the boxes. Then twice a week there are men belonging to the hospitals [almhouses] that go round the city and ring a bell at every house... 11

In 1617, the Amsterdam deacons spent 100,000 florins on charity. By 1700, this amount had tripled and yet this was only a portion of such spending in the city. 12 With such a welfare system encouraging the poor to seek shelter in alms houses, there were relatively few beggars on Dutch streets. 13 The substitution of social University 1974. For similar humanist attacks on the poverty problem, see Natalie Zemon Davis, "Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy: the Case of Lyon", Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, V, ed., William Bowshy, Lincoln, Neb. 1968, 216-275.

10

? See Kenneth Haley, The Dutch in the Seventeenth Century, London 1972, 152-165. Rembrandt's largest and most polished beggar etching, dated 1648, shows just the sort of individual hand-out Protestants were determined to stamp out. Rather than reading this as evidence of Catholic notions of charity, I follow Hellerstedt in seeing here Rembrandt's human expression of caritas. To represent charity with a man dropping a coin in a box would be true to Protestant doctrine but pictorially empty as an image of Christian love. Thus, even Dutch Calvinist emblems such as our fig. 9 use almsgiving to express charity and poverty, though in metaphoric terms. Other themes of begging and charity in Rembrandt include the blind Belisarius, (Benesch 1053); St. Martin and the Beggar (Ben. 1051); Philemon and Baucis (Ben. 960, Bredius 481); and the Good Samaritan (H. 101, Ben. C4, 144A, 518a, 519b, 556, 615, 621, 629, 863B, 945). See also H. van de Waal, "Rembrandt's Etching, 'Le petit orfevre'", in idem, Steps Towards Rembrandt, Amsterdam 1974, 233-246. What ties these works together is not an approval of begging but their thematic core of love and mercy in the face of wretchedness.

11

? Haley, op. cit., 156-7.

12

? Ibid., 158

13

welfare for individual almsgiving, however, did not mean the personal dimension of charity- its Christian love- was overlooked. Protestant sermons urged people to be "moved to compassion" by the poor and to "feel their diseases". 14 To be sure, the public attitude toward beggars, mirrored in contemporary Dutch art, remained one of fear, revulsion, and satire. 15 It might even be supposed the Dutch welfare system was welcome in bourgeois society because it reduced the number of unsightly beggars on well-swept Dutch streets. If welfare houses functioned to some extent as detention centers, it would be a crude oversimplification to dismiss them as only repressive institutions. 16

In the same way, middle class loathing of beggars coexisted with a strong sense of charity as social and religious responsibility, especially if the money box allowed one to avoid confronting the filthy poor. What makes Rembrandt's prints unique is their success at confronting shabbiness and suffering, their power to force the viewer to feel the "diseases" of the poor, to look beneath the dehumanizing surface of ruin and sickness and recognize individuals with personal histories and needs. The culmination of this intensely empathetic, humanizing scrutiny is the 1630 etching of a beggar whose face betrays Rembrandt's own features. (Fig. 2) Beyond studies from life, experiments in the passions, and indirect reflections of Dutch admonitions to charity, the etchings of vagabonds also served as the experiments in etching necessary to an aspiring printmaker. This would explain why most of the beggar prints (along with the grimacing self-portraits) disappeared after 1635 when Rembrandt's printmaking technique reached a certain maturity. If drawings of vagabonds continued into the early 1650's, they were lost among hundreds of other sheets recording Dutch life; ìthey indicated less a special interest in the poor than the seventeenth-century artist's need to draw continually "from life". The lack of any Rembrandt paintings of vagabonds - this despite the fact that other Dutch artists painted beggars 17 - further supports such an interpretation.

? Ibid., 158.

14

? William Tyndale, Works, ed., H. Walter, Parker Society, London 1848-50, III.202.

15

? Reinhold, op. cit..

16

? Johan Thorsten Sellin, Pioneering in Penology. The Amsterdam Houses of Correction in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Philadelphia, 1944. Thanks to Matt Kavaler for this reference.

17

* * * * * *

If these comments still seem inadequate as an explanation for Rembrandt's beggars, a deeper understanding emerges in the context of Rembrandt's early religious works. The most striking feature of the early etchings as a whole is their emphatically impoverished, "beggarly" style. Religious subjects are all but indistinguishable from vagabonds. An Penitent Jerome of 1635 closely resembles the Beggar with Dog etched four years earlier. 18 A blind vagabond reappears as the sightless Tobit. 19 Most importantly, etchings of the Flight into Egypt from 1630 and 1633 resemble a number of Vagabond Family scenes from the same years. 20 (Figs. 3-4). The ragged and lowly naturalism of these studies emerges in larger finished works such as an etched Descent from the Cross (c. 1633) (Fig. 5) and a painting of the Holy Family in Munich (c. 1635) 21 Like the Flight, the Descent uses an almost grotesque ugliness to heighten the pathetic ruin of Christ. The Munich picture in turn plays on the same Pauline mystery of Christ's sublime lowliness, though in a more tender vein. Even its viewpoint from above emphasizes the figures' humility. All three works evoke the poverty of Mary, Joseph, and Christ as stressed in every Protestant account of Christ's life. 22 This Protestant bias emerges ? Dieuwke de Hoop-Scheffer, "Een serie bedelaars door P. Quast", Bulletijn van het Rijksmuseum, 1974, 166-172.

18

? The Jerome is Hind 140, the Beggar with Dog, Hind 75.

19

? The Blind Vagabond is Hind 72, (c. 1631), the Tobit is Hind 74, (c. 1631).

20

? For the Flight into Egypt etchings, see Hind 17, 105. For the Vagabond Family, see Hind 116, (c. 1634). Even in the early 1650's, there remains a remarkable similarity between Rembrandt's Tramp Family etching of 1652 (Hind 259) and the Flight into Egypt etching of 1654 (Hind 276).

21

? See Horst Gerson, Rembrandt Paintings, Amsterdam 1968, p. 216, no. 63.

22

? Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., Luther's Works, St. Louis 1958-1967, 55 vols., vol. 21, 322-3, 329; vol. 22, 74; vol. 52, 9-11; Martin Elze, "Das Verständnis der Passion Jesu im ausgehenden Mittelalter und bei Luther", Geist und Geschichte der Reformations: Festgabe Hans Rückert zum 65. Geburtstag, Berlin 1966, 127-151; Marc Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Christ. Stages and Themes of the Reformer's Christology, trans. Edwin Robertson, Minneapolis 1982, 51-54, 153-

more clearly in contrast to typical Catholic images such as Rubens' Antwerp Descent from the Cross or Poussin's Holy Family on the Steps. Both works feature heroic, ideal forms seen grandly from below. 23 An even sharper contrast appears in a seventeenth- century Dutch painting juxtaposing the impoverished Christ on his ass with the richly dressed pope riding in triumph on a white stallion. (Fig. 6) 24 Though this image has its roots in medieval "Catholic" writing, particularly Bernard's famous antitheses contrasting the poor Christ to the rich, worldly pope, 25

it became the backbone of heretical and Protestant iconography under Lollards, Hussites, and Lutherans. 26 In the same way, the Cistercian and Franciscan

176, 255-267, 314-316. Calvin describes Joseph, Mary, the infant Christ, and the Nativity setting as "very poor and despised", "despised and poor", and "mean and despicable". For these and other passages, see his Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. William Pringle, Edinburgh 1845, 2 vols., I., 55, 60, 82-3, 113, 123, 137. Another Dutch artist whose scenes of beggars (Hollstein, XXIV, 155-159) parallel his religious works (Hollstein, XXIV, 143-146) is Willem Basse, active 1628-48.

23

? Martin Warnke, Peter Paul Rubens, New York 1980, pl. 2. For the centrality of triumph in Flemish Baroque art, see John B. Knipping, Iconography of the Counter-Reformation in the Netherlands Nieuwkoop, 1974, 2 vols., I., 54-60. For the Poussin, see Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, Washington, D.C. 1967, pl. 172.

24

? R. P. Zijp. "Christus op de ezel, de paus te paard", Geloof en Satire, Anno 1600, Utrecht 1981, 34-7.

25

? See Elizabeth Kennan, "Antithesis and Argument in the 'De consideratione'", in Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Dom Jean Leclercq, Washington, D.C. 1973, 91-109.

26

? Paul De Vooght, "Du 'De consideratione' de saint Bernard au 'De potestate papae' de Wiclif", Irenikon, XXV, 1953, 114-132; G. Laehr, "Die Konstantinische Schenkung in der abendländischen Literatur des ausgehenden Mittelalters", Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, XXIII, 1931-2, 120-81; Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1967, 41-53; G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, New York 1966, 500-506; Gerald Fleming, "On the Origin of the 'Passional Christi et Antichristi' and Lucas Cranach the Elder's Contribution to Reformation Polemics in the Iconography of the Passional", Gutemberg Jahrbuch, 1973, 351-67; Robert W. Scribner, "For the Sake of Simple Folk": Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, Cambridge, Eng. 1981, 148-189. One pair of these woodcuts even contrasts the pope with his rich friends to Christ surrounded by cripples and beggars. Luther himself contrasted the pope carried aloft in triumph to the beggarly Christ. "They [Catholics] bear their god aloft but our god bears us aloft. Reason sees in Him only a poor beggar who died". See Luther "Works", op. cit., 23, 115. ("Sie tragen ihren gott, aber unser gott tregt uns. Die vernunft sihet ihnen an, das

emphasis on Christ's poverty 27 was always a potentially heretical tradition, strongest among popular movements hostile toward ecclesiastical wealth and papal power. The Christ favored by the Catholic hierarchy was generally a King of Kings rather than a poor carpenter or man of sorrows, a Christ whose visible form expressed divinity and power. If this was true of much official Gothic art, it was even more true for the Italian Renaissance where late medieval apostolic concerns vanished in the face of a humanistic aesthetic expressing papal power and splendor. Triumphant, heroic, and beautiful, confident of the "dignity of man", 28 this aesthetic permeated the religious art developed by Mantegna, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian. 29 Dissenting Italian voices were either suppressed or, as was true for Bernardino Ochino, (d. 1564), forced to flee North to more

er ist ein armer bettler undt selbst gestorben", Werke, Weimar, ed., 33, 177)

27

? Michel Mollat, "Pauvres et pauvreté à la fin du XIIe siècle", Revue d'ascétique et de mystique, 1965, 305-323; Jean Leclercq, "Aux Origines bibliques du vocabulaire de la pauvreté du Christ"; idem, "Les Controverses sur la pauvreté du Christ"; Jean Longere, "Pauvreté et richesse chez quelques predicateurs durant la second moitié du xiie siècle", all three in Michel Mollat, ed., Etudes sur l'histoire de la pauvreté. Moyen age-XVIe siècle, Paris 1974, 2 vols., I., 35-44; 45-58; 255-73. Other examples of the beggarly Christ can be found in John of Ford, Sermons on the Final Verses of the Song of Songs, trans. Wendy Mary Beckett, Kalamazoo 1977-1983, 5 vols., V., (Ser. 82.2), where the humble Christ is compared to a "slave" and a "beggar"; and Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds, trans. Serge and Elizabeth Hughes, New York, Ramsey, Toronto 1982, 222, where Christ is "a beggar in rags, exhausted because of me". More material can be found below in n. 32.

28

? Charles Trinkhaus, "Humanism", Encyclopedia of World Art, New York, Toronto, London 1963, VII, 702-743, esp. 725-34; John W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome, Durham 1979, 133-174.

29

? A. D. Fraser Jenkins, "Cosimo de' Medici's Patronage of Architecture and the Theory of Magnificence", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1970, 162-70; Andrew Martindale, The Triumph of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the Collections of Her Majesty the Queen at Hampton Court, London 1979; Leif Holm Monssen, "Triumphus and Trophaea Sacris: Notes on the Iconography and Spirituality of the Triumphant Matyr", Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 1982, 10-20; Esther Nyholm, "Triumph as a Motif in the Poems of Petrarch and in Contemporary and Later Art", in Fleming Andersen, ed., Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium, Odense 1980, 70-99; David Rosand and Michelangelo Muraro, Titian and the Venetian Woodcut, Washington, D.C. 1976, 37-54; John Shearman, "The Florentine Entrata of Leo Xth, 1515", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1975, 136-54; Charles Stinger, "Roma Triumphans: Triumphs in the Thought and Ceremonies of Renaissance Rome", Medievalia et Humanistica, 1981, 189-201.

sympathetic audiences. One of the most popular Franciscan preachers of his day, Ochino eventually sought a Protestant exile where he complained, "the false Christians [i.e. Catholics] do not reflect themselves in the crucified Christ; they desire a Christ after their manner, rich, proud, magnificent". 30

If this powerful, rich, triumphant Christ continued in Catholic Baroque art from Carracci to Rubens, 31 it never developed in large sections of the North. In Renaissance Germany and the Netherlands, the late medieval apostolic ideals of poverty and humility flourished in lay movements such as the Devotio Moderna and in the sermons and writings of Suso, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Gansfort. 32 Similarly, Northern Renaissance artists including the Rohan Master, Campin, the Housebook Master, Bosch, Gru"newald, and Bruegel developed a Christian aesthetic of poverty and lowliness. 33 If the Rohan Master 30

? Karl Benrath, Bernadino Ochino of Siena, trans. Helen Zimmern, London 1876, 43, with a similar passage on p. 40. Also see Ochino's The Tragedy, trans. Bishop Ponet, London 1549, repr. Grand Rapids 1899. An Observantist Franciscan for many years, Ochino is yet another link between late medieval apostolic and Reformation ideals. See Frederic Church, The Italian Reformers: 1534-1564, New York 1932, repr. New York 1984, 55-60. The triumphal Christ appears in Protestant art only when His divinity reasserts itself, for example at the Resurrection. See Julius Held, "A Protestant Source for a Rubens Subject", Liber Amicorum Karel G. Boon, Amsterdam 1974, 79-95, repr. in idem, Rubens and His Circle, Princeton 1982, 138-154. Calvin freely applies Roman triumphal imagery to the resurrected Christ while insisting on His shameful, degraded appearance during His human life. It is the antithesis between the two which gives such mystery to the Incarnation and puts faith at the center of Protestant piety. Commenting on Isaiah 53:12, Calvin wrote, "the deeper the shame before men, the greater was the glory of his resurrection by which it was followed". See Calvin, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, trans. William Pringle, Edinburgh 1853, 4 vols., IV, 130.

31

? Knipping, op. cit., I., 54-60; and Monssen, op. cit.

32

? John Saward, Perfect Fools, Oxford 1980, 58-92. For medieval poverty in general, see Carter Lindberg, "Through a Glass Darkly. A History of the Church's Vision of the Poor and Poverty", Ecumenical Review, 1981, 37-52 with more refs.; Lester K. Little, "Pride Goes Before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom", American Historical Review, 1971, 16-49; idem., Religious Economy and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, Ithaca 1978; Brenda M. Bolton, "Paupertas Christi: Old Wealth and New Poverty in the Twelfth Century", in Derek Baker, ed., Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, (Studies in Church and History, vol. 14), Oxford 1977, 95-113. 33

? I will discuss this tradition in a future article on "The Hidden God in Netherlandish Art from Campin to Bosch". [note: now available by email from rwbal@conncoll.edu]

studied actual corpses to create a startling ugliness for his dead Christ, 34 the Housebook Master's observation of beggars and peasants brought a new lowliness and humility to his religious scenes. 35 Northern art even took up the late medieval legend of a beggarly Christ. Found in thirteenth and fourteenth-century hagiography, such a Christ appeared miraculously among the sick beggars tended by various saints, including Martin of Tours 36 and Elizabeth of Hungary. In Bernt Notke's altarpiece of St. Elizabeth, painted in 1482, we see Christ among the lepers, cripples, and beggars gathering around the saint. (Fig. 7) 37

If the Reformation rejected the Franciscan ideals of voluntary poverty, begging, and almsgiving, the late medieval apostolic language of poverty and wretchedness 38 continued as a fundamental Protestant metaphor for the human 34

? See the Rohan Master's Corpse Before God and Lamentation in Millard Meiss, The Rohan Master, New York, 1973, pls. 63, 57.

35

? Jane C. Hutchinson, The Master of the Housebook, New York 1972, figs. 20, 28, 65.

36

? For Christ as the beggar assisted by St. Martin, see Jacobus da Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger, New York 1969, 664, and Patrik Reuterswärd, Hieronymus Bosch, Uppsala 1970, 147, where a painting by Marti Torner in Palma de Mallorca is reproduced. Thanks to Dr. Reuterswärd for calling this tradition to my attention.

37

? The Elizabeth altar is discussed and illustrated in Walter Paatz, Bernt Notke und sein Kreis, Berlin 1939, 2 vols., I., 359-62l II., figs. 60-70. See also Andre Vauchez, "Charité et pauvreté chez sainte Elisabeth de Thuringe, d'après les actes des procés de canonisation", in Mollat, op. cit., I., 163-176. Such a miracle grew out of the late medieval ideal of voluntary poverty. For Christ as the leper attended by St. Giovanni Colombini (d. 1367), see Saward, op. cit., 92-93. For Christ compared to crippled beggars in a fifteenth-century Dutch Book of Hours, see John Plummer, introduction and commentaries, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, New York n.d., 73. For positive, (and negative) attitudes toward beggarly wounds and illness, see Patrik Reuterswärd, "Den onde rovarens sar", Bild och belydelse Kvarntrask, 1974, 242-3.

38

? For mankind as a poor, sick, crippled, blind beggar in need of grace, see Sister Mary Bodenstedt, "Praying the Life of Christ. First English Translation of the Prayers Concluding the 181 Chapters of the 'Vita Christi' of Ludolphus the Carthusian", Analecta Cartusiana, 1973, 16, 22, 42, 74, 80, 90, and 124; Heinrich Suso, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom and the Little Book of Truth, trans. James M. Walsh, London n.d., 113; Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, London 1952, trans. Leo Sherley-Price, 123, 207, 211, 213; Edward Waite Miller, Wessel Gansfort. Life and Writings, works trans. by J. W. Scudder, New York and London 1917, 2 vols., II., 259-260.

condition. 39 This was in direct contrast to contemporary Catholic thought in Italy which was developing lengthy defenses of the "Dignity and Excellency of Mankind". 40 In his Sermons on John, Luther offered a typical example of this Protestant outlook.

Christ is your Liege Lord; without Him you can possess nothing. And though I may appear to be a beggar in your sight, I still own a great treasure, compared with which all your wealth is not worth a penny...On earth we are beggars, as Christ Himself was; but before God we are bountifully blessed with all good things. 41

Calvin concurred with this general estimate of humanity as is clear from the most superficial knowledge of his writings. 42 In commenting on Isaiah XI:4, "For he will judge the poor in righteousness", he too developed the metaphor of Protestant "poverty".

The grace of Christ strictly belongs to the poor or meek; that is, to those who, humbled by a conviction of their poverty, have laid aside those proud and lofty dispositions which commonly swell the minds of men...That spiritual poverty which the Prophet recommends to all the members of

39

? Herschel Baker, The Image of Man: A Study of Human Dignity in Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Cambridge, MA 1947, esp. 313-333 for Luther and Calvin. In the Italian Reformation, all mankind is "miserable, wretched, poor, blind, and naked". For this, see ch. iv of the Beneficio di Cristo, trans. Ruth Prelowski, in John A. Tedeschi, ed., Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus, Florence 1965, 21-102, esp. 69.

40

? Baker, op. cit., 203-57; Trinkhaus, op. cit., 725-34; O'Malley, op. cit., 133-174.

41

? Luther, "Works", op. cit., vol. 24, 84; Werke, 45, 537. For Luther's metaphoric language of poverty, see Leo Brummel, "Luther and the Biblical Language of Poverty", Ecumenical Review, 1980, 40-58; and Bonnie Lee Brummel, "Luther on Poverty and the Poor: A Study of Luther's Exegetical Understanding and Use of the Biblical Language of Poverty", Ph.D., Columbia 1979.

42

? Baker, op. cit., 320-33.

Christ is, to have no lofty views, but to be truly humbled by a conviction of our poverty and nakedness, so as to depend on Christ alone. 43

Developing Luke 4:18 which speaks of preaching to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, and giving sight to the blind, Calvin calls poverty

the condition of all of us without Christ. Those persons to whom God promises restoration are called poor, and broken, and captives, and blind, and bruised. 44

In England, the Protestant divine Hugh Latimer, addressed the theme in a sermon of 1552.

Consider ... that we be but beggars altogether. For the best of us hath need to say daily, "Our Father, give us this day our daily bread". I would these proud and lofty fellows would consider this, namely, that they be but beggars; as St. Paul saith, "Quid habes quod non accepisti?" "What have ye, that you have not gotten with begging?" 45

Not surprisingly, Protestant emblem books took up such metaphors and gave them pictorial form. In Georgette de Montenay's Calvinist Emblemes ou devises chrestiennes (Lyons, 1571), mankind is depicted as a group of blind, crippled beggars struggling toward Christ who surmounts a healing fountain of life. (Fig. 8) A Dutch translation of de Montenay appeared as part of a polyglot edition published in Frankfurt in 1619. 46 A similar image of mankind appeared in the seventeenth-century Dutch emblem book of the staunch Calvinist, Jacob de Brune. In a scene from his Emblemata of Zinne-Werck (Amsterdam, 1624), mankind is

43

? Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, trans. William Pringle, Edinburgh 1850, 2 vols., I., 377-378.

44

? Calvin, Harmony of Evangelists, op. cit., I., 229, also see 260-261.

45

? See Latimer, op. cit., I., 413.

46

? Georgette de Montenay, Emblemes ou Devises Chrestiennes, Lyon 1571, 3. For de Montenay's Calvinism, see the introduction by C. N. Smith, in the Scolar Press reprint, Menton 1973. The polyglot edition is described in Mario Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, London 1947, 2 vols., II., 115.

shown as a blind beggar. 47 (Fig. 9) The caption reads, "Man is blind, in what he loves". Here the church in the right background reminds us that blindness (and poverty) is the sinful human condition in need of God. Similar ideas were also taken up by Daniel Heinsius. The most famous humanist lecturing at the University of Leyden where Rembrandt studied briefly, his religious poetry and sermons yet displayed a fervent Calvinism. 48 In an oration on the passion, translated into English in 1618, he quoted the book of Job on the wretchedness of mankind and the mystery of God's love.

"Am I not to be consumed as a rotten rotten thing, and as a garment that is moth-eaten?" How then can it be that I, being of so abject and corruptible a constitution, should be saved from death, by the death of the Lord of life? O strange and admirable love, as far beyond comprehension as end and measure. 49

If this was the Protestant human condition, it was necessarily what Christ assumed at his incarnation, when he "hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows...he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities", (Isaiah 53:4-5), 50 when he "took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses" (Matthew 8:17), 51 when he "took upon him the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7). If mankind was spiritually poor and vile, so too was the Protestant Christ a despised and impoverished "beggar" in His earthly existence. It was a favorite image for Luther

47

? Jacob de Brune, Emblemata of Zinnewerck, Amsterdam 1624, 153, (Emb. XXI).

48

? Paul Sellin and John J. McManmon, trans., Daniel Heinsius, On Plot in Tragedy, Northridge, CA. 1971, xi-xv; Baerbel Becker-Cantarino, Daniel Heinsius, Boston, 1978. Thanks to Matt Kavaler for this reference.

49

? See Daniel Heinsius, The Mirrour of Humilitie: or Two Discourses on the Nativitee and Passion of Christ, done into English by John Harmar; R. Alsop, London 1618, 92-93.

50

? On the passages from Isaiah, Calvin writes, "The reason, therefore, of the weakness, pains, and shame of Christ is that 'he carried our sicknesses'"; "Christ took upon him the filthiness of our iniquities in order to rescue us from everlasting destruction". See Calvin, Isaiah, op. cit., 115, 118-119.

51

? Matthew 8:17 itself draws on Isaiah 53:4-5.

when he preached "on earth we are all beggars, as Christ himself was". 52 Christ is a "poor person, yes a beggar", "only a poor beggar who died", "a poor beggar from Nazareth". 53 The last words which Luther wrote two days before his death summed up this Protestant humility, "We are beggars: this is true". 54 In England, Hugh Latimer echoed the theme in another sermon, drawing in typical Protestant fashion on Paul.

The wisdom of God is not according to the wisdom of the world...[Christ came] not in riches and great pomp, but in poverty and in rags...his disciples...the most vilest men in the world; as St. Paul saith, "excrementa mundi", "outcasts of the world". And so shall all his disciples be, all they that will be saved by him...will you have Christ? Where shall you find him? Not in the jollities of the world, but in rags, in the poor people. Have you any poor people amongst you in your town or city? Seek him there amongst the rags, there shall you find him. 55

This seeking of Christ among the rags and poor people of Amsterdam is just what Rembrandt seems to have done with his vagabond etchings and drawings. Transfigured into a spiritual quality by his mood- setting chiaroscuro, the poverty of Christ would evoke the Protestant mystery of the hiddden God which appeared

52

? "Betler sind wir auff erden (wie Christus auch selbs gewest ist)". See Luther, Works, op. cit., vol. 24, 84; Werke, Weimar ed., 45, 537.

53

? "eine arme person undt ein Bettler", "ein armer Bettler undt selbst gestorben", "eine arme Bettler von Nazaret". These and five other examples of Luther's beggarly Christ are quoted in Jan D. Kingston Siggins, Martin Luther's Doctrine of Christ, New Haven, London 1970, 28, 32-36, 39. See Luther "Works", op. cit., 22, 128; 23, 11, 13, 27, 41, 115, 391; Werke, 33, 11, 14, 177, 637; 45, 537; 46, 647; 47, 230. Even Erasmus, with his apostolic, Pauline Christianity, compared Christ to a vagabond. See The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans., Craig R. Thompson, Chicago, London 1965, 208.

54

? "Wir sind Bettler: hoc est verum". Luther Works, op. cit., vol. 54, 476. See Heiko A. Oberman, "'Wir sein Bettler. Hoc est verum': Bund und Gnade in der Theologie des Mittelalters und der Reformation", Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 1967, 232-252. Thanks to Steven Ozment for this reference.

55

? The Works of Hugh Latimer, ed. G. E. Corrie, Cambridge, 1844, 2 vols., II, 126-127.

so frequently in Luther and, to use the following passage as an example, in Calvin. 56

He came into the world so as to be everywhere despised; his glory lay hid under the humble form of the flesh; for though a majesty worthy of "the only-begotten Son of God" shone forth in him, yet the greater part of men did not see it, but, on the contrary, they despised that deep abasement which was the veil or covering of his glory...the shame of the cross... 57

In seventeenth-century Holland, Protestant writers like Heinsius and Rembrandt's friend, Jeremias de Decker, developed this imagery. Heinsius Orations on the Nativity and Passion dwell continually on Christ's mysterious poverty and lowliness. 58 Christ's whole life from "cratch unto his crosse" was a "mappe of miserie". 59 Particularly during the Passion, the divinity of Christ was "sealed up" like "Sunne-beames under a Signet of Cimmerian clouds", 60 hidden, that is, under the flesh of bloody suffering and death. The whole incarnation according to Heinsius exemplified this mystery.

Thou that art infinite, thou that art neyther confined to time or place, thou that art subject neyther to death or passion, didst out of thy most entire and intense love unto us cloathe thy selfe with our frail flesh. 61

56

? Siggins, op. cit., 32-36, Lienhard, op. cit..; B. A. Gerrish, "'To the Unknown God': Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of God", idem., The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage, Chicago 1982, 131-149, with numerous refs.

57

? Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, trans. William Pringle, Edinburgh 1853, IV, 107-108.

58

? Heinsius. Editions of the Orationes appeared in Leiden in 1612, 1620, 1627, 1642, and 1657.

59

? Ibid., 53.

60

? Ibid., 83-84.

61

? Ibid., 93.

Heinsius described in brutal detail the "Ecce Homo" scene where the contradictions of the Protestant Christ were again strikingly evident. "Behold the man; Behold him that is Lord Paramount ... and yet now he standeth poore and unfurnished of all things". 62 As was common, the metaphor of poverty summed up the suffering and lowliness of Christ and evoked the mystery of his assumed humanity. It was this paradox which best expressed for Heinsius, God's "strange and admirable love, as farre beyond comprehension and measure", a love we should make "our perpetual Meditation". 63 Similar imagery appears in De Decker's most famous poem, Goede Vrydag ("Good Friday"), published in 1651, and thus particularly relevant for Rembrandt's later works. 64

In stressing the sublime lowliness and poverty of the incarnate Christ, such Protestant texts help us to relate Rembrandt's beggars to his religious works, seeing them in part as studies for a Protestant imagery of Christ. To be sure, these works were not conscious formulations of Protestant dogma. For Rembrandt, they were more Christian than Protestant, reflecting the simple commonplaces of the spirituality he knew from the reformed church he grew up with. 65

The beggar studies also evoked Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft's defense in 1630 of the use of coarse language in vernacular Dutch poetry. "To pick up outcast words off the streets and make them do such service as they are fit for, even though it were among the nobility, is a thing one can take credit for." 66 Though part of a nationalistic reform of the Dutch language, such remarks also drew on an earlier tradition of Protestant rhetoric and poetic. Rooted in the earlier vernacular ideal of sixteenth-century hedge preaching, this rhetorical tradition ultimately pointed to 62

? Ibid., 63.

63

? Ibid., 93-94.

64

? W. A. Visser 't Hooft, Rembrandt and the Gospel, New York 31-42, 74-77.

65

? The myth of Rembrandt the Mennonite, based on the flimsiest evidence and contradicted by Rembrandt's membership in the Dutch Reformed church, has been demolished by 't Hooft and others. They note that Rembrandt's supposed Mennonite qualities are actually typical of mainstream Protestantism. This is not to deny to Rembrandt possible sympathies with Mennonite concerns, but rather to locate such sympathy in its proper Protestant context.

66

? Letter to Huygens, 1630; see Brieven van Hooft, II, i, quoted in Pieter Geyl, The Netherlands Divided.(1609-1648), trans. S. T. Bindoff, London 1936, 237.

the ordinary language and metaphor used by Christ and the apostles, a style which contrasted sharply to the rich, worldly, Latin rhetoric of Catholic oratory. 67 Already in an extended discussion of rhetoric, Paul had warned against seeing "according to outward appearances". This led him to comment on how Christ's "bodily appearance is weak and his speech contemptible". (II Cor. 7-70) Not surprisingly, Calvin responded warmly to this passage in his own remarks on Christian rhetoric. Taking up Paul voice and extending his observations, Calvin wrote,

as to my wanting ornaments of speech, and wanting too the more elegant refinements of discourse, the reason of this was, that I did not aspire at them, nay rather I despised them, because there was only one thing that my heart was set on-that I might preach Christ with simplicity. I do not simply confess that my preaching has been conducted in a rude, coarse, and unpolished style, but I even glory in it...this was the method that was divinely proscribed for me. 68

Though much Dutch rhetoric in Rembrandt's day was far from plain, Calvinist preachers frequently invoked the Pauline ideal of a simple though powerful vernacular style. A typical example appeared in Holland in the 1659 Dutch edition of Nehemiah Rogers' lengthy commentary on the prodigal son, first published in 1620. Following Calvin and many other Protestant writers, Rogers invoked Paul's rhetorical insistence on a plain truth delivered plainly, even if "the style dislike thee, as too homely, harsh, or ragged". 69 At roughly the same time as Hooft was

67

? Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands. 1544-1569, Cambridge, Eng. 1978; Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric, Princeton 1979; Donald Kuspit, "Melanchthon and Dürer: the Search for the Simple Style", Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1973, 177-202; and 't Hooft, op. cit., 74-77. For the vernacular style in Dutch historical scenes, see Jan ten Brink Goldsmith, "From Prose to Pictures: Leonaert Bramer's Illustrations for the 'Aeneid' and Vondel's Translation of Virgil'", Art History, 7, 1984, 21-36.

68

? Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Corinthians, trans. John Pringle, Edinburgh 1848, 2 vols., I., 74.

69

? Nehemiah Rogers, The True Convert. or an Exposition upon the Whole Parable of the Prodigall. Luke 15.11.12, London 1620, p. A-5. The Dutch edition is Nehemia Rogers, De Ware Bekeerde Sondaar. Ofte een Verklaringe over het 15. Cappitel des H. Evangeliums Lucae, trans. Cornelius a Diemerbroeck, Utrecht 1659. Roger's commentary is applied to Rembrandt's imagery of the prodigal son by Barbara Haeger, "The Religious Significance of Rembrandt's 'Return of the

picking up "outcast words off the streets" and Rogers defending a "ragged" style, Rembrandt was also developing a rude and unpolished vernacular, taking up beggarly images and making them "do service" for the spiritual ends of his religious art. In this he was working within the basic thrust of Protestantism which stressed the translation of scripture into a powerful vernacular. This Protestant reading of the early beggar studies can be extended by analyzing the motifs of poverty, disease, lameness, and begging in Rembrandt's religious works. One year before the beggarly "self-portrait", Rembrandt etched a Peter and John Healing the Crippled Beggar by the Golden Gate. 70 Unusual for this subject is the viewpoint he chose behind the beggar, as if to make him a surrogate for the real spectator. Abandoned in later drawings of the subject, 71 this perspective reappeared in the great print of 1659 where Peter again seems to address us along with the cripple. (Fig. 10) Likewise did Calvin use this story to address his readers. We have in this history a type or figure of our spiritual restoring; namely that the Word, laid hold on by faith, did restore the cripple to his limbs, so the Lord pierceth into our souls by the Word, that he may restore the same. 72

In Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print of 1650, a large group of blind beggars and cripples moves toward Christ. (Fig. 11) By integrating a variety of narrative incidents from Matthew, Rembrandt was able to show a divine love encompassing all of society, even the outcast, the sick, the elderly, and the infantile. We have already seen this in de Montenay's emblem (Fig. 8) and in Heinsius's orations on the incarnation and passion. A passage from Calvin takes us to the source for such thinking.

We are constantly looking for splendor; and nothing appears to us more incongruous, than that the heavenly kingdom of God, whose glory is so magnificently celebrated by the prophets, should consist of the dregs and offscourings of the common people. And it is truly a wonderful purpose of God that though he has the whole world at his command, he choses rather to

Prodigal Son'", Ph.D., Ann Arbor 1983. Haeger's discussion is different from mine and she uses none of the passages cited here.

70

? Hind 5.

71

? Benesch, vol. 1, nos. 71, 111, 619. Caravaggio had of course developed similar compositions in different subjects as Allison Kettering reminds me.

72

? Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, trans. Henry Beveridge, Grand Rapids, 2 vols., I., 140, with similar comments on p. 137.

select a peculiar people to himself from among the contemptible vulgar, than from among the nobility. 73

Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print then is a kind of Protestant translation of an "All Saints" altarpiece, transforming it into a small-scale, vernacular image suited to the everyday spaces of Dutch households. Rather than showing rows of glorified saints, he confronted his audience with a "New Jerusalem" peopled with the ugly, 74 the sick, the poor, and the lame, those who wait passively for salvation like the sick woman lying at Christ's feet. His elect are like "children", a common Protestant metaphor made explicit here by the compositional parallel established between two diagonal forms: a child carried by its mother and a sick man carried on a wheelbarrow. 75 "Poor", "sick", 76 "blind", and "childlike", mankind can only "beg" for grace. Such images of the restored cripple and blind beggar overlap with Rembrandt's lifelong depictions of the restored prodigal son. 77

73

? Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. William Pringle, Edinburgh 1845, 2 vols., II., 36.

74

? St. Peter in the Hundred Guilder Print and the etching of the Penitent Peter (1651, Hind 217) displays the ugly, silenus- like face of Socrates. As in Rembrandt's monumental painting, Peter Denying Christ, (Amsterdam), even the ugly sinner is loved by God and saved. Note also the grotesque ugliness of Christ's disciples in our fig. 5.

75

? For mankind as a child, see Christine Kibish, "Lukas Cranach's 'Christ Blessing the Children': A Problem of Lutheran Iconography", Art Bulletin, 1955, 196-203.

76

? For the tradition of the sick soul, see Rudolph Arbesmann, "Christ the 'Medicus Humilis' in St. Augustine", in Augustinus Magister: Etudes Augustiniennes, Paris 1954, 623-629; idem, "The Concept of 'Christus Medicus' in St. Augustine", Traditio, 1954, 1-28. Also see Wolfgang Hein, Christus als Apotheker, Frankfurt 1974 and Saul Nathaniel Brody, The Disease of the Soul. Leprosy in Medieval Literature, Ithaca and London 1974, 125-192. For Protestant metaphors of sickness, see Winfried Schleiner, The Imagery of John Donne's Sermons, Providence 1970, 68-84; Heribert Schutzeichel, "Krankensalbung und Krankenseelsorge in der Sicht Calvins", Catholica, 1979, 169-198; Halewood, op. cit., 88-94; and Terence C. Cave, Devotional Poetry in France: c. 1570-1613, Cambridge, Eng. 1969, 94-183.

77

? Ingvar Bergstrom, "Rembrandt's Double Portrait of Himself and Saskia at the Dresden Gallery: A Tradition Transformed", Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1966, 143-169; J. F. Kat, De Verlorenen-Zoon als letterkundig Motief, Amsterdam 1952, William Halewood, Six Reformation Subjects: A Preface

As has been shown, this was a favorite Protestant demonstration of the "grace and mercy of God to poor sinners". 78 Commentaries on the parable routinely stressed the reader's spiritual likeness to the prodigal and the universal need for grace. In his late painting of the Prodigal's Return, Rembrandt also showed the penitent sinner closely from behind, heightening the viewer's spatial and personal involvement. With ragged clothes and bruised bare feet, the prodigal looked not unlike Rembrandt's earlier beggars coming to Christ. Indeed, the prodigal's fall from wealth to extreme poverty made phrases like "poor" and "beggarly" common in dramatic paraphrases and commentaries on the parable. 79 In Bloemaert's painting of the Prodigal Son Among the Swine, there was even a blind beggar juxtaposed with the prodigal begging for mercy. 80 So too did Nehemiah Rogers address universal metaphors of prodigality, begging, and poverty to the readers of his commentary on the parable.

"Thou sayest thou art rich and increased with goods, and hast need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art poore, blind, miserable, wretched, and naked". 81

to Rembrandt, Toronto 1982, 52-63; Haeger, op. cit., with further refs.

78

? Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, London n.d., 4th ed., IV, (Luke 15); cited in Halewood, op. cit., 52.

79

? W. E. D. Atkinson, "Acolastus": A Latin Play of the Sixteenth Century by Gulielmus Gnapheus, Ontario 1964, 171, 179; and Rogers, 1620, op. cit., 215, 255, 261, 314. Earlier commentators established this comparison including Tertullian and Peter Chrysologus, both known in sixteenth and seventeenth-century editions. See The Writings of Quintus Sept. Flor. Tertullianus, trans. Rev. S. Thelwall, Edinburgh, 1870, III, 75; and Saint Peter Chrysologus: Selected Sermons; and Saint Valerian: Homilies, New York 1953, 27.

80

? Dated 1619, the painting is in the Kunsthaus, Zurich.

81

? Rogers, 1620, op. cit., 76. On p. 213, Rogers asks the reader to confess to being "a filthy, loathsome, uncleane Leper, whose soule and body is wholly polluted and defiled; from head to foote there is nothing appearing, but wounds, bruises, and sores". Similar thinking was also common to Pietist writers such as Johann Arndt. See Johann Arndt, True Christianity, trans. Peter Erb, New York 1979, 99-100.

Like the prodigal, "We are beggars, let us not be chusers". 82 Following similar Protestant injunctions, Rembrandt confessed himself a poor sinner and a "beggar" in his Dresden Self-Portrait as the Prodigal. 83

Returning to Rembrandt's early beggar studies, we can now place them among a larger group of early works exploring a Protestant sense of sin, wretchedness, and penitence, this despite the occasional "Catholic" subject. This group includes six early representations of the Penitent Jerome, an etching of the Penitent Francis, the Penitent Judas, three scenes of the Healing at the Golden Gate, and the etched Return of the Prodigal Son. 84 Seen within the whole of Rembrandt's oeuvre, the beggar studies helps us uncover a broad metaphoric field of poverty, sin, misery, sickness, prodigality, and beggary. Through such imagery, Rembrandt explored the human condition as he knew it, fallen in sin yet graced inexplicably with God's love. However personal and unique this iconography was, it yet drew on elemental Protestant themes repeated in emblems, sermons, poems, religious tracts, and vernacular Bible commentaries. 85

* * * * *

82

? Rogers, op. cit., 255.

83

? See Bergstrom, op. cit.. Gabriel Metsu also painted himself as the prodigal son in a picture also in Dresden. The literary self-portrait as prodigal appears in Wessel Gansfort's The Divine Providence, in Miller, op, cit., II., 99; and Traherne's "The Third Century", in H. M. Margoliouth, ed., Thomas Traherne: Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings, Oxford 1958, 118. Haeger, op. cit., 182-183, convincingly interprets Rembrandt's Louvre Self Portrait as Paul as another self-portrait as a sinner saved through grace. For Renbrandt's positive sinners, see Jan Bialostocki, "Rembrandt's Sünder als tragisches Held", in Otto von Simson and Jan Kelch, eds., Neue Beiträge zur Rembrandt Forschung, Berlin 1973, 143-169.

84

? For the Penitent Jerome, see Hind 94, 140, 309; Benesch cat. nos. 59, 65, 111. For the Penitent Francis, see Hind 292 (1657). Also note Rembrandt's penitent Magdalene, (Ben. 925) and the drawings of Job on his dungheap, another theme of human wretchedness: Benesch 628, 1379.

85

? Margaret Deutsch Carroll, "Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker", Art Bulletin, 1981, 585-610.

In the widest sense, Rembrandt's beggar themes lead us to reconsider the whole nature of his coarse Dutch naturalism. If the ugly and fallen as objects of divine and human love emerges as a core theme for his religious works, we find this more gently expressed in late secular works as the Jewish Bride and the Family Group. Here is an ordinary, "sinful" humanity, yet one transfigured with floating, immaterial reds and oranges, transfigured with a colored light expressing the caritas of marriage and family. In this sense, the late Rembrandt's color only continues the transformation of the fallen world effected by his earlier chiaroscuro. Both transfigure the humble world without prettifying it, evoking more generally the Christological mystery of sacred love confronting the lowly flesh. It is this mystery which allows us to connect such an early work as the 1630 beggar Self-portrait with the Leningrad Return of the Prodigal executed at the very end of Rembrandt's life. Both embody the Protestant sense of mankind in need of grace, the paradox of a fallen and ugly world transfigured with divine love. We have here what scholars have called "encompassing" or "core" themes, terms which point to the fruitful mingling of different subjects in Rembrandt's psyche. 86If Rembrandt's religious scenes gained new authenticity and human depth from his sympathetic scrutiny of Amsterdam's poor, the vagabonds and beggars were conversely infused with a tragic dignity borrowed ultimately from Christ's loving descent into human infirmity and sickness. In this sense, the beggars can be seen in part as secularizations of the "Man of Sorrows" theme, 87 taking on a tragic dignity even though "despised and rejected...and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3) In interweaving sacred and profane, Christ and beggar, in conjoining opposites without losing a sense of opposition, in hiding the divinity of Christ and revealing the humanity of "riff-raff", Rembrandt brought religious and secular art to a level of representational paradox, mystery, and faith equivalent to that which the Reformation had restored to Christianity. If this accomplishment was rooted in

86

? For "encompassing themes", see Jan Bialostocki, "Rembrandt's Iconography", Rembrandt After Three Hundred Years: A Symposium, Chicago 1973, 67-82, and Haeger, 165-85. Julius Held used the term "core theme" in a lecture on Rembrandt's beggars at a Rembrandt symposium at Wellesley College in 1982. At that time he argued Rembrandt's sympathetic treatment of beggars had a personal rather than metaphoric explanation.

87

? In a miniature illustrating the Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda, the Master of Catherine of Cleves had already borrowed the vertical Man of Sorrows formula to increase the pathos of his crippled beggar. See The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, op. cit., 86.

both common Protestant metaphor and everyday Dutch reality, it yet transcended these sources in a language of form and meaning unparalleled in Dutch art. In the end, Rembrandt's etchings and drawings of beggars remain the obscure, private "studies" they were. So too does his religious work remain highly personal despite its roots in elements of basic Protestant spirituality. That his pictures most closely tied to the common realities of street life should lead to his uniqueness is perhaps the best testament to this paradox.

Robert W. BaldwinArt DepartmentKent State UniversityKent, OH 44240

The author thanks Miriam Usher Chrisman, Creighton Gilbert, Craig Harbison, Matt Kavaler, Allison Kettering, Lucinda Reinhold, and Patrik Reutersward for reading previous drafts and suggesting many improvements. This article is dedicated to Colin Eisler whose broad scholarship and generous spirit put many of us in debt.

List of Illustrations

1. Rembrandt, Studies of Beggars and a Self-Portrait, etching, ca. 1632, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

2. Rembrandt, "Self-Portrait" as Beggar, etching, 1630, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

3. Rembrandt, Flight into Egypt, etching, 1630, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

4. Rembrandt, Vagabond Family, etching, ca. 1634, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

5. Rembrandt, Descent from the Cross, etching, 1633, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

6. Christ on the Ass vs. the Equestrian Pope, Dutch, early seventeenth century, Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent, Utrecht

7. Bernt Notke, Christ Appearing to St. Elizabeth, St. Elizabeth altar, 1482, Tallinn, cathedral

8. emblem from Georgette de Montenay, Emblemes ou devises chrétiennes, Lyons, 1571, p. 3. Kent State University Library

9. emblem from Jacob de Brune, Emblemata of Zinne-Werck, Amsterdam, 1624, p. 153. Kent State University Library

10. Rembrandt, Peter and John Healing the Crippled Beggar at the Golden Gate, etching, 1659, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

11. Rembrandt, The Hundred Guilder Print, etching, 1650, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam