References
Christie’s (2025) Self-Portrait with Cap Pulled Forward, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669). The Sam Josefowitz Collection: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part III, Live Auction 23941. London: Christie’s, 3 December 2025. Available at: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6564142 (Accessed: 30 November 2025).
This rare impression is almost entirely black, the plate wiped so heavily that only the thinnest traces of light survive. The mourners’ faces, the curve of Christ’s body and face, and the gestures that support him register only as slight, wavering outlines against the dark. The brightness that grazes the figures is produced solely by the ink thinning enough for the vellum to breathe through. In Rembrandt’s late etchings such near-erasure often carries a devotional charge: the scene is not offered in clarity but allowed to emerge gradually, as if the viewer must enter the darkness before any meaning can take shape. In seventeenth-century Amsterdam, impressions like this could invite a meditative way of seeing, where the Passion is approached through shadow, and the remaining light becomes the point at which grief, faith and reflection meet.
Sales Catalogue
