The famous 17th century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn – better known as simply Rembrandt – is an interesting figure in part because like the similarly famous and yet biographically obscure Christopher Columbus. He has been often been claimed – as Stephen Nadler among others has noted – to have been an ardent philo-Semite, (1) while Columbus has been ardently proclaimed to have been jewish despite this being a hoary old myth based on one overly enthusiastic biographer who significantly overstated his case. (2)
Yet this image of the philo-Semitic Rembrandt – which as Rabbi Meir Soloveichek’s recent article in ‘Mosaic Magazine’ demonstrates albeit accidentally – (3) has infected jewish and even non-jewish discourse on the great Dutch painter. Despite the fact that it is very much a myth as Nadler has argued at length (4) as well as had to publicly correct jewish reviewers trying to use his work to bolster said myth. (5)
To be sure Rembrandt famously lived in Amsterdam’s jewish quarter and knew many of the wealthy Sephardi jewish families – who had settled in St. Anthoniesbreestraat in the early 1600s – (6) that he ended up receiving many commissions from for portrait work. (7) This by can be said to account for the artists many portraits of jews – both Ashkenazi and Sephardi – that is one of the cornerstones of the myth of Rembrandt’s philo-Semitism.
This in turn is used to argue that Rembrandt used the jews of Amsterdam as models for his Old and New Testament figures, (8) while claiming that the artist was both a religious liberal and fan of cosmopolitanism. (9) In essence the argument is that because Rembrandt (10) and Dutch dissenting religious culture (11) had a tolerant view of the jews and engaged heavily in what we would now call ‘Jewish Studies’. It follows therefore that Rembrandt and Dutch culture was philo-Semitic, which – as Nadler notes – is nonsense. (12)
It is worth noting that this is the time of Peter Stuyvesant – the famously anti-jewish governor of New Amsterdam – and the years following the Synod of Dort in 1618, which reduced any religion other than that of the official form of Dutch Calvinism to the role of rejected social outsider. (13) More specifically the Synod of Dort included a significant raft of restrictions and disabilities placed directly on the jews. (14)
We can therefore see that Judaism – despite being an officially recognised religion from 1615 in the Netherlands – (15) was not something lusted after by the Dutch people or their government, but rather something that a small minority of rejected cosmopolitan outsiders, preachers and theologians wanted to idolise. Even then – as Nadler notes – (16) the simple reality was that these individuals were largely engaged in an attempt to convert the jews to their form of Christianity rather than seeing something inherently good or wonderful in Judaism itself.
This was made easier by the fact that the jewish population regarded Dutch Calvinism of the time – with some justice perhaps – as being a form of crypto-Judaism. (17)
Rembrandt’s life interlinks with this, because he was allegedly a friend of the famous Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel. Who he got to know through ben Israel’s neighbour and mutual friend as well as fellow religious outsider the elderly Remonstrant preacher Jan Utyenbogaert. (18)
The artist famously etched a portrait of ben Israel in 1636 and provided four illustrations for his book on jewish mysticism that predicted the return of the jewish Messiah: ‘The Illustrious Stone’. (19)
This is frequently used as prima facie evidence to claim Rembrandt as a philo-Semite, but yet – as we have already seen – this is not likely to have been the case. Since Rembrandt didn’t convert to Judaism nor did he do much for ben Israel beyond said portrait and the four illustrations, which suggests that while he may have kept up an acquaintance with ben Israel. He doesn’t appear to have been much more than a ‘friend of a friend’ of the prominent rabbi.
That this may have been rooted in his attitudes is suggested by looking at Rembrandt’s paintings in that in 1635 – the year before he drew ben Israel’s portrait and the illustrations for his book – the artist finished his ‘Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple’, which portrays the jewish moneychangers as subhuman monstrosities while Jesus is shown to be of northern European cast of features.
In other words, at a time that Rembrandt was already supposedly friends with ben Israel and extremely philo-Semitic according to jewish historians like Simon Schama. He was portraying jews as greedy sub-humans that needed to be driven out with extreme violence.
It doesn’t make sense: does it?
What would make more sense is if Rembrandt saw ben Israel as more of a client for his artistic abilities that a preacher friend of his had introduced him too and not as an actual friend. In essence he got paid by people like ben Israel to paint their portrait and illustrate their books, while portraying them being subjected to populist pogroms in his art.
This isn’t to suggest that Rembrandt was a fire-breathing anti-Semite, because he clearly wasn’t but yet there is a certain hardness to his religious paintings that deal with the jews as the enemies of Christ that suggests that he harboured a deep distaste for Judaism and its adherents.
Similarly when we look at Rembrandt’s Old and New Testament paintings such his ‘The Descent from the Cross’ (1634), ‘The Risen Christ showing his Wound to the Apostle Thomas’ (1634), ‘The Holy Family with Angels’ (1645), ‘Christ and the Samaritan Woman’ (1659) and ‘Haman and Ahasuerus at the Feast of Esther’ (1660). They explicitly depict favourable Old and New Testament figures with a Northern/Central European cast of features.
This is even easier to see when you compare Rembrandt’s portraits of non-jews such as ‘Portrait of Adriaen van Rijn’ (1654) and ‘A Bearded Man’ (1661) with his paintings of European mythology – for example ‘Danae’ (1636-1646) – and then to his known paintings and etchings of jews such as ‘Portrait of an Old Jew’ (1654) and ‘Portrait of an Old Woman’ (1654) (the latter is believed to be a jewess). (20)
Rembrandt’s portraits of jews only resemble his paintings of biblical scenes when the jews are negatively portrayed and when the biblical scene is a positive one then they are of northern/central European countenance.
Interesting: isn’t it?
Maybe what Rembrandt was subtly communicating through his art was not that jews were a poor persecuted people who Christians should love and revere as a ‘people of the Bible’, but rather as brutal conspirators who were not the people of Christ but rather ferocious anti-Christian usurpers. Who even Rembrandt was afraid of offending, because of their sheer mercantile and monetary power in the Dutch Republic of his day that he depended on for his commissions so he could paint.
Yet when he did paint; he expressed his real views about his jewish neighbours, which they failed to heed because they believed that Rembrandt was ‘in their pocket’ so-to-speak.
References
(1) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/10/09/rembrandt-the-jews/ ; http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/rembrandts-jews-by-stephen-nadler-74664.html ; Geoffrey Cotterell, 1972, ‘Amsterdam: The Life of a City’, 1st Edition, Little, Brown & Company: Boston, p. 158
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-christopher-columbus-jewish
(3) https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2017/09/rembrandts-jewish-vision/
(4) Cf. Stephen Nadler, 2003, ‘Rembrandt’s Jews’, 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, specifically see p. 48
(5) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/10/09/rembrandt-the-jews/
(6) Christopher White, 1984, ‘Rembrandt’, 1st Edition, Thames & Hudson: London, p. 85; for more detail on this see Jonathan Israel, 1982, ‘The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World 1606 – 1661’, 1st Edition, Clarendon Press: Oxford, p. 47
(7) Ibid, p. 75; Xenia Egorova, Youri Kouznetsov, Irena Linnik, Vladimir Loewinson-Lessing, 2003, ‘Rembrandt: A Journey of the Mind’, 1st Edition, Grange: Hoo, p. 108
(8) Cotterell, Op. Cit., p. 126; Simon Schama, 1987, ‘The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age’, 1st Edition, Collins: London, p. 587; White, Op. Cit., p. 176
(9) White, Op. Cit., pp. 53; 75
(10) Julien Depaulis, 2003, ‘Rembrandt’, 1st Edition, Grange: Hoo, p. 24; Egorova et al, Op. Cit., pp. 7; 13
(11) Nadler, Op. Cit., pp. 92-95
(12) Ibid, p. 93
(13) White, Op. Cit., p. 53
(14) Simon Schama, 1977, ‘Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813’, 1st Edition, Collins: London, p. 212
(15) Russell Shorto, 2013, ‘Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City’, 1st Edition, Doubleday: New York, p. 163
(16) Nadler, Op. Cit, pp. 92-93
(17) Geoffrey Parker, 1977, ‘The Dutch Revolt’, 1st Edition, Allen Lane: London, p. 285, n. 36
(18) White, Op. Cit., pp. 48-49
(19) Ibid, p. 49
(20) Egorova et al, Op. Cit., p. 112
(21) Israel, Op. Cit., pp. 47; 126-127; David Nicholas, 1992, ‘Medieval Flanders’, 1st Edition, Longman: New York, p. 170; Schama, ‘Patriots and Liberators’, Op. Cit., p. 262