Two days before Christmas I went to see the exhibit “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus” (at the Detroit Art Institute through February 12). The thesis of the exhibit is that Rembrandt discovered a new way to picture Christ. During the Renaissance, artists tended to paint a brown-haired, light-skinned Christ, often with a muscular, well-proportioned anatomy patterned on the Greek ideal. This Christ is active and heroic, typically gesturing with emphasis or emoting openly. Rembrandt’s early representations of Christ usually fit this mold. However, over the course of years, Rembrandt’s portrayals of Christ changed. For example, an early print showing the raising of Lazarus has Christ dramatically raising his arm over the grave, while a later version of the same event shows a much more subdued miracle worker. An early print of Christ’s trial shows him as a bold and dramatic, but, in a print made 20 years later, Christ is so unobtrusive that the viewer has to look carefully to pick him out from a clutch of figures.

The curators are particularly attentive to tracing Rembrandt’s change from painting fair-haired European Christs to painting dark-haired, Jewish Christs. Rembrandt lived much of his life in the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam and became quite familiar with his Jewish neighbors. In the mid-1640s, he made studies of a young Sephardic Jew, and, shortly thereafter, he and his school produced several pictures of Christ that had the hair style and facial features of that Jew. Rembrandt had discovered Christ’s Jewishness. (The view that Rembrandt was influenced in his portrayal of Christ by his interactions with his Jewish neighbors is disputed by some scholars, as noted in an article in the Huffington Post.) Rembrandt’s new way of picturing Christ continues his tendency towards a less active, more subdued Christ, but also evokes a new interiority. This is a contemplative figure whose serenity is suggestive of inner depths of spirit. The portraits of Christ made in the late 1640s are small, with a dark background that pushes the image of Christ towards the viewer. They invite intimacy.

The exhibit prompted a fair amount of reflection on my part. I was fascinated by the process of discovery that Rembrandt had to go through to find this Christ. The preconceptions bequeathed from his culture had to be stripped away little by little until he discovered a Christ freed from those preconceptions. It was courageous to follow this road of discovery to its end. Though Amsterdam was a city of relative tolerance, presenting a very Jewish Christ to a society that looked down on Jews took boldness, especially for someone whose livelihood was dependent on how the public received his work.

I also am interested in how the change in his representation of Christ is correlated with events in Rembrandt’s life. He achieved prominence in his twenties, moving to Amsterdam when he was about 25 and quickly becoming a successful and sought-after portrait painter. However, three of the four children he fathered with his wife Saskia died in infancy, and Saskia herself died when Rembrandt was about 35. Though he earned a decent income, Rembrandt lived beyond his means and went bankrupt when he was about 50. Isn’t it likely that these losses and struggles influenced his art by making it less showy and more subdued? Might the contemplative Christ reflect a more contemplative Rembrandt?

I also wonder whether Rembrandt’s process of discovery of a more interior Christ entailed a progression in his religious understanding. The earlier Christ is patently God-like—a distinctive figure who stood out from those around him and exercised his power in a dramatic fashion. The later Christ is more human—a man who was remarkable primarily in the sensitive and meditative qualities he displayed. This Christ is less intimidating and more approachable than the earlier version. Many followers of Christ go though a similar progression in how they view him. Early on, he is much different from us: the great prophet, the worker of miracles, the savior of the world. Though none of these elements disappear, they come to be counterbalanced by Christ’s humanity. He experienced the same times of confusion and struggle that we do; he felt the same feelings as we experience, and he sometimes faced daunting obstacles, just as we do. This is a Christ we not only respect, but one with whom we can relate. Perhaps in his later works Rembrandt was portraying Christ as he had personally come to know him.

The earlier, Classical portrayal of Christ evokes the universal myth of the hero. A more ethnically distinct Christ is a more parochial, less universal figure. Rembrandt was inviting his viewers to consider Christ as having been embedded in a particular culture and living in a particular time and place. At first, this might seem to make Christ less relevant to those from other cultures or living in other circumstances. Yet being tied to a certain time and place is a universal human experience. Like Christ, we all need to be engaged with our particular place and time. None of us lives as a universal man or woman; we all live as Jews or Dutchmen or Argentines or Americans, born in a specific era, with unique challenges and opportunities. Christ the Jew was Christ in the flesh, dealing with all the limitations that implies. He lived a life in the particular; he was human.

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