Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669), Christ Crucified Between the Two Thieves: ‘The Three Crosses’, 1653, Drypoint on laid paper, third state (of five), Plate: 387 × 455 mm; Sheet: 396 × 465 mm, Christie’s, Old Masters Sale, London, 7 December 2023
Rembrandt’s Three Crosses stands among the most ambitious and technically daring achievements of his graphic work. Executed entirely in drypoint—a medium that produces a velvety, luminous line but quickly deteriorates under pressure—it was limited to a small number of impressions, perhaps no more than seventy-five before the plate wore down. Each surviving state records the artist’s continual rethinking of composition, meaning, and theological emphasis, making the print a rare visual document of artistic process.
Five states of the plate are known. The first two, unsigned, remain sketch-like and provisional, while the third—the present example—marks Rembrandt’s first considered completion. Around twenty-two impressions of this state are recorded. Here he concentrates light at the centre of the sheet, drawing the eye to Christ crucified, while surrounding the central event with a dense crowd in varied attitudes of alarm, pity, and indifference. The formal language of Netherlandish narrative tradition is clear: figures advance in rhythmic clusters across the picture plane, unfolding the Passion almost as a continuous sequence of episodes, comparable to Renaissance engravings by Dürer or Lucas van Leyden. The enclosing darkness at the margins works to contract the space, intensifying the viewer’s focus upon the intersection of Christ’s body and the vertical beam.
Later states profoundly alter this vision. In the fourth and fifth, produced several years afterwards, Rembrandt stripped away peripheral incident, dissolved the radiance of divine illumination, and allowed a heavy pall of shadow to engulf the scene. The emphasis shifted from a multi-scenic narrative of Calvary to an elemental meditation on Christ alone, suspended in darkness at the point of death. These revisions mark not only a technical experiment in drypoint but also a theological deepening, as the imagery moves from outward spectacle to inward reflection.
The Three Crosses gains further resonance when set beside Rembrandt’s other large-scale Passion prints of the 1650s, such as The Entombment and Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo). Each of these compositions, treated through successive reworkings of a single plate, unfolds as a meditation in stages: from populous, detailed evocations of the biblical drama to pared-down visions in which the mystery of redemption is conveyed through shadow, emptiness, and silence. Together, they form not a conventional Passion cycle in the medieval sense but a personal exploration of Christ’s suffering, in which the very act of re-engraving and altering becomes a metaphor for spiritual searching.