261 - Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606 Leiden - Amsterdam 1669), The Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece .

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606 Leiden - Amsterdam 1669), The Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece . Etching and drypoint on laid paper, watermark fragment Arms of Amsterdam (cf. Hinterding, variant 'D-c-z'). (1651). 12.8 x 11.1 cm (sheet). Bartsch 53; White/Boon 53 V (of VI); Hinterding/Rutgers (The New Hollstein) 262 VI (of X). A very fine, rich and deep black impression of New Hollstein’s sixth state (of ten), printing with dark plate tone on and around the donkey’s head, on Joseph’s robe and forehead, and elsewhere, with lighter plate tone in the panes of the lantern and touches of burr beneath the donkey’s nose, beneath the Virgin's right eye and elsewhere. Trimmed to the image. Rembrandt returned to the subject of the Flight into Egypt on several occasions (cf. Bartsch 52 and 55). In the present etching, he transformed the biblical narrative into a dramatic nocturne of extraordinary darkness, one of the most radical explorations of night in his printed oeuvre. The lantern provides the sole source of illumination, casting a concentrated pool of light that reveals only fragments of the scene. Joseph emerges most clearly from the surrounding darkness, while the Virgin and the donkey remain barely discernible, their forms almost dissolving into the night. Rembrandt’s treatment of nocturnal light owes much to the example of Adam Elsheimer, whose celebrated night scenes were widely known through the reproductive engravings of Hendrick Goudt. – Small areas of surface rubbing on the verso carefully backed with Japanese paper. Otherwise in very good condition. Taxation: regelbesteuert (VAT: Regular Taxation).