Object data
pen and brown ink, with opaque white; framing lines in black ink over brown ink
height 192 mm × width 174 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Amsterdam, c. 1658 - c. 1659
pen and brown ink, with opaque white; framing lines in black ink over brown ink
height 192 mm × width 174 mm
inscribed on verso: in pencil (with the Hofstede de Groot cat. no.), HdGr 1253
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Watermark: Lion with a sword and arrows within a garland
Light foxing throughout1
...; purchased from the dealer M. Nijhoff, The Hague, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1905;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1906, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum (L. 2228), 1930
Object number: RP-T-1930-8
Credit line: Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)
After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.
The Canaanite army general Sisera was defeated by the Israelite forces under the command of the Israelite ruler and judge Barak and the prophetess Deborah, who had foretold that the general would die at the hands of a woman. After his defeat, Sisera fled to the settlement of Heber the Kenite, where he was received by Heber’s wife, Jael, who lured him into her tent. She gave him milk to drink and offered to hide him under a blanket, but after he fell asleep, she drove a tent peg through his temple all the way into the ground (Judges 4:18-21).
In the drawing, Sisera lies asleep on his shield next to a chair from which his helmet hangs; Jael is about to drive the peg through his head. By placing the helmet at the same height as Jael’s head and the hammer in her hand, Rembrandt used this head-covering – which normally has a protective function – as a symbol of Sisera’s impotence. It is contrasted with the hammer, the symbol of Jael’s power, a power that she is about to wield.
The Bible relates that Jael covered Sisera with a blanket, but this is never shown in the pictorial tradition of this subject. On the other hand, as in Rembrandt’s drawing, pieces of the general’s armour – shield or helmet – are often represented in prints, such as the woodcut by Lucas van Leyden (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-1803),3 the engraving by Philips Galle from his series of six Celebrated Women from the Old Testament (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1961-449)4 and the small woodcut ornamental border by Christoffel van Sichem III in the Biblia Sacra, published by Jan Moretus in Antwerp in 1657.5 Although the shield is missing from Van Sichem’s print, it seems generally to have been the compositional model that most influenced Rembrandt. The inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions shows that he owned a few helmets, including a Japanese helmet (‘een Japanse hellemet’), and this could have been the model for the one in the drawing.6
The figures are drawn with a reed pen, using broad, confident strokes. In a few places, the lines have been widened into shadows, which are indicated elsewhere with a few short lines of hatching. The lines, varied in tone and sometimes rather angular, give a convincing picture of the attitudes of the figures: the twist in the assassin Jael’s body and the weary limbs of the sleeping Sisera. At one point, too much ink flowed from Rembrandt’s pen, obscuring Jael’s face, so the artist corrected this area with opaque white.
A comparison with a drawing Rembrandt made of the same subject a decade earlier, at the end of the 1640s, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (inv. no. WA1950.51),7 shows a substantial difference in style and conception. Here a slightly later moment in the story is shown, one that does not occur in the biblical text: Sisera is awake and defending himself – a highly charged dramatic scene, strengthened by the various positions in which his arms have been drawn. Sisera’s raised leg resembles not only a motif in the drawing of Cain Slaying Abel, in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (inv. no. KKS10094),8 but also a detail in the 1636 painting of the Blinding of Samson, in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main (inv. no. 1383).9 In our drawing, which was made about ten years later, there is a feeling of quiet tension in the simple triangular composition of the figures, which is, of course, appropriate for the slightly earlier part of the story Rembrandt has chosen.
Another rendering of the subject by Rembrandt, probably made about the same time as the Amsterdam drawing, is lost but known from three other school versions: one in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (inv. no. Z 345),10 one in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. 22986)11 and one in the Folkestone Museum (inv. no. F3644/51).12 Here Jael is approaching from the right, while Sisera is seen from behind. The helmet and shield are not shown.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1253; W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 129 (c. 1650); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. The Hague 1942, no. 71 (c. 1659); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 1042 (1659-60); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. The Hague 1985, no. 46, with earlier literature; RRP V (1989), p. 232, fig. 213; B.C. van den Boogert (ed.), Rembrandts schatkamer, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1999, p. 124, fig. 82; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 106-07, fig. 102; P. Schatborn, C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken and H. Grollemund, Rembrandt dessinateur: Chefs-d’oeuvres des collections en France, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 2006-07, p. 172, under no. 62, fig. 70; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, pp. 85-86, under no. 21; J. Bikker et al. Late Rembrandt, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), 2014-15, pp. 243-244, 304, no. 114.
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Jael Killing Sisera, Amsterdam, c. 1658 - c. 1659', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28565
(accessed 13 November 2024 04:19:24).