Beheading of John the Baptist / recto: The Entombment, over a Sketch of an Executioner

Entry

In the study on the recto, two men are carrying the dead body of Christ to the tomb (fig. a, inv. no. RP-T-1930-28(R)). They have laid him on a cloth, held by two men at the centre. Using such a cloth was a natural and practical way of transporting a corpse, but in most of Rembrandt’s representations of this subject, including his grisaille of circa 1639 in the Hunterian Art Gallery at University of Glasgow (inv. no. GLAHA:43785),⁵ and the painting from The Passion series of circa 1635-39 for Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (inv. no. 396),⁶ Christ’s figure is not concealed behind one of the porters. The figure is, however, partially concealed in Dürer’s woodcut from the Small Passion series (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-1348),⁷ an impression of which Rembrandt owned, and in a drawing by Rembrandt in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem (inv. no. O* 049),⁸ which he copied from a sheet attributed to Perino del Vaga. Christ’s head usually appears as if sleeping – not dropping backwards with loose hair hanging down. These details emphasize the lifelessness of the body in the drawing. In this case, Rembrandt found a more realistic solution than he did in his paintings of this subject.

The figures in the drawing are very broadly indicated, with the exception of the most important part of the composition, the head of Christ. Rembrandt was primarily concerned with the arrangement of the figures and with Christ’s face. The curtain on the left shows a clear connection with the painting of The Entombment in Munich, in which it forms some sort of canopy above the tomb in which Christ’s body was placed after it was taken down from the cross in the background. Rembrandt used the curtain in the drawing as the starting point for a composition that differs from the painting since Christ is being carried upward from front left to right. At the left of the pen study, we see a weeping woman, who is only partially visible because a paper correction has been attached to the lower left-hand corner. This woman does not appear in the painting, but she is a motif that Rembrandt used in other scenes from Christ’s Passion.

If the paper is turned ninety degrees clockwise, the head and hand of a man whose body is just barely visible at the edge of the curtain can be seen. A similar first draft was made on the verso, which represents the Beheading of John the Baptist. These two sketches are typical of the way in which Rembrandt began by sketching a light first draft to which he could easily make changes while working it out in darker lines. If necessary, he could make an entirely fresh start, as he did in the case of the executioner on the verso, whose head and body were drawn twice.

The sketches of the Beheading of John the Baptist are related to an etching by Rembrandt of the same subject (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-165).⁹ In the print, the executioner is standing (in reverse) in the same pose as in the sketches, but the figure of the Baptist was turned forty-five degrees further away. The sketch of the executioner under The Entombment scene on the recto is remarkably similar to the same figure in a drawing in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1860,0616.130),¹⁰ where the moments both before the beheading and after (with the decapitated body) are shown. We can also see a third figure there, possibly a priest. A third drawing, the Beheading of Anabaptist Martyrs in the Robert Lehman Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, probably the work of a pupil (inv. no. 1975.1.791),¹¹ shows the same group as on the left side of the British Museum drawing, but here the figures have been sketched in profile. Based on this relationship, it has been suggested that the models for the figures in this group arranged themselves as in a sort of play or ‘Chamber-play’ (Kamerspel), to use Van Hoogstraten’s term, so that Rembrandt and his students could draw them from various angles.¹² Rembrandt’s drawing in London could have been done in this fashion, but the sketch on the verso of the present drawing does not feature the same group in the same poses and was probably sketched from scratch as a preparatory study for the etching.

The etching is dated 1640 and the painting of The Entombment in Munich was completed in February 1639, as is stated in a letter from Rembrandt to Constantijn Huygens (see inv. no. RP-T-1947-213). There are a few possibilities for the dating of our drawing. If it were made before the completion of the Munich painting, the studies for the Beheading of John the Baptist must have been drawn at least about a year before the 1640 etching. If both the studies and the etching date from 1640, Rembrandt must have made The Entombment drawing after the painting of the same theme, perhaps even quite some time later. Except for the curtain on the left side, the drawing of The Entombment bears no relation to the composition of the group in the painting. It is thus more likely that this drawing is a new exploration of the theme and that both it and the sketches of the Beheading coincided in date with the etching of 1640. The stylistic similarities between The Entombment and, for example, A Man Helping a Rider to Mount a Horse (inv. no. RP-T-1930-32(R)) also support a dating of circa 1640-41.

Peter Schatborn, 2017