Small Study of the Head of the Sick Woman / recto: Studies for the Sick Woman in the ‘Hundred Guilder Print’

Entry

The recto of this drawing (fig. a, inv. no. RP-T-1964-127(R)) shows a study for the sick woman in Rembrandt’s most celebrated and complex etching, Christ Healing the Sick, universally known as the Hundred Guilder Print (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1962-1).⁴ In the print, the woman appears at the centre of the composition, reclining on a straw mat at Christ’s feet, where she is one of the ‘great multitudes’ who followed him to Judea to be cured. In this single composition, Rembrandt portrayed many episodes from chapter 19 of the Gospel according to Matthew: as well as the healing of the sick (Matthew 19:1-2), he included the blessing of the children (Matthew 19:13-15) and the story of the rich young man (Matthew 19:16-24), who is seated lost in thought at the left, with his hand in front of his face. The presence of a camel on the right alludes to Christ’s final remark from the last episode that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The double-sided drawing in Amsterdam is one of three sheets in which Rembrandt was working out the correct pose for the figure of the sick woman. The other two studies are in the collection of Clement C. Moore II in New York,⁵ and in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 2695).⁶ On the recto of the Amsterdam sheet, Rembrandt studied the figure twice: first, on the left, seated in profile, looking up, with both hands around her knees; then, on the right, with her legs slightly extended and her left arm raised, though this, too, was initially drawn in her lap. Below the figure at the left is a crossed-out alternative for her right hand, and at the lower left is another subsidiary sketch for her right foreleg and the same right hand; on the verso is a small sketch of her head. The draughtsmanship of the studies on both sides is sketchy, almost messy, but Rembrandt has managed to achieve clarity by his use of shading and strong accents.

The Berlin drawing – in which the sick woman is seen in the context of the several figures grouped around her – comes closest to the final result in the etching. It must thus be the last in the sequence of the surviving studies, though naturally the motifs are in reverse. Her legs are fully extended, and she leans back, her head and torso supported by the figure behind her. She is just barely able to hold her left arm aloft, and her right arm lies listless at her side. This last detail is still not fully resolved, revealing that Rembrandt was continuing to search for the best position for this arm, as can also be seen in the four separate attempts on the Amsterdam recto.

There is debate around the order of the Moore and Amsterdam studies, but whatever the sequence, they reveal Rembrandt’s penetrating ability to explore, understand and represent the human condition. The artist began by representing the woman still strong enough to sit upright, her illness expressed, above all, by her gaunt features and sunken cheeks, conveyed by means of a short pen stroke in each of the two alternative head studies, the recto of the Moore sheet and the verso of the Amsterdam sheet. Martin Royalton-Kisch⁷ believes that the study on the left of the Amsterdam sheet, the only one in which her face is largely concealed, came first, and only at a later point did he toy with the idea, in the Moore drawing, of showing her upright with both hands raised and clasped in prayer. In the opinion of Jane Shoaf Turner,⁸ on the other hand, the Moore study with its praying pose probably came first, but was abandoned when Rembrandt realized that a sick woman might not have had the strength to raise both arms; instead he needed to suggest her weakness through her whole body, not just her face. The series of changes to the position of the legs and arms in the two studies on the Amsterdam recto reveal, in her view, a logical progression that inches ever closer to the Berlin drawing and the final etching. Rembrandt began at the left, with the figure still seated upright, but both hands now in her lap. In the right-hand study, the woman has started to lean back and push her legs out, at first with both hands still down. In a pentiment, however, Rembrandt raised her left hand. This was a critical development, a gesture meant to engage Christ’s attention and to integrate the figure into the larger narrative. She must, after all, compete with the other figures begging to be healed. Finally, in order to further accentuate her enfeebled state, in the Berlin drawing he lowered the hand and fingers to an intermediate position – a subtle shift that emphasizes the apparent gravity of her situation and suggests that she has expended her very last ounce of energy to signal her faith in the Lord. However, as Royalton-Kisch pointed out, the motif of the hands clasped in prayer from the Moore drawing was not wasted, but transferred to the standing figure behind her – a symbol of faith signalled in the etching by the shadow that it casts on Christ’s robe.

There are a few more drawings possibly made by Rembrandt while he was working on the Hundred Guilder Print: one of the feeble man with a stick, standing behind the wheelbarrow, in the Louvre in Paris (inv. no. 22891),⁹ and one in The Courtauld Gallery in London (inv. no. D.1978.PG.188),¹⁰ for the standing man with an outstretched arm between Christ and the man with a stick, although the latter link was questioned by some.¹¹ A drawing in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (inv. no. 4713)¹² has been linked with the woman and child seen from behind at Christ’s right hand, but that connection is also more tenuous.¹³

Opinions also differ as to the date of the Hundred Guilder Print, but watermarks on all the early impressions of both states date from circa 1648.¹⁴ The difference in style between the left and right side has aroused the suspicion in the past that the etching was made over a period of about ten years. Even though Rembrandt probably worked on this print for an extended period, a comparison with dated prints shows that the most likely dating is approximately 1648. The difference between the left and right side can be explained by the artistic development Rembrandt underwent during his intensive work on the etching rather than by a great difference in time. The rather open and sketchy nature of the strongly lit figures on the left is reminiscent of earlier prints,¹⁵ while the steadier handling of the lines on the right, partially limited by the fine work in the shadows, corresponds to the style of his later prints.¹⁶ We can thus conclude that the drawings must have been made around 1647-48, although some authors have dated them as early as 1639. The broad, sketchy drawing style, full of contrast, seems to fit in well with drawings from the late 1640s, such as Daniel in the Lions’ Den (inv. no. RP-T-1930-17), Cottage with White Paling among Trees (inv. no. RP-T-1981-1), as well as drawings from the first half of the 1640s, such as The Entombment (inv. no. RP-T-1930-28(R)) and A Man Helping a Rider Mount a Horse (inv. no. RP-T-1930-32(R)).

Peter Schatborn, 2017