Rembrandt's Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age (review)

Was Rembrandt a visual Christian Hebraist avant la lettre? Every era fashions its own Rembrandt, the art historian's Pygmalion. In Rembrandt's Faith, a post-9/11 Rembrandt springs to life: a community bridge-builder and irenic ecumenical in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, an artistic St. Paul who had "one comprehensive vision, an interdenominational unity"(p. 364). In this latest addition to the bibliography on Rembrandt's relationship to religion, Shelley Perlove and Larry Silver conclude that the artist's interest in Judaism was rooted in an unswerving Christianity that may have implicitly sought Jewish conversion as its ultimate goal.

Eschewing a traditional chronology of the artist's works, the authors trace the biblical narrative in Rembrandt's religious subjects. Chapter 1, "A Religious Stew," provides an excellent introduction to the major denominations active in Leiden and Amsterdam and their connections to Rembrandt's œuvre. In chapter 2, the authors consider Rembrandt's engagement with the patriarchs, kings, and heroes of the Old Testament and Apocrypha through a Christian typology shaped by sources like the Dutch Statenbijbel, Desiderius Erasmus's writings, John Calvin's commentaries, and Pauline theology. One example of the shift in emphasis will suffice. Whereas Julius Held famously stressed the roles of blindness and familial love (between father and son, husband and wife) in the travails of Tobit, Perlove and Silver consider Tobit primarily as the ancestor of Christ's followers (p. 158). This is an Old Testament closely bound to the hope of redemption.

How then did Rembrandt understand the New Testament? Chapter 3 posits his interest in Jesus's infancy and early scenes of the Holy Family as a fulfillment of the Old Dispensation with the Temple of Jerusalem as the key to a religiously pluralistic environment. Simeon, St. John the Baptist, and St. Joseph receive special attention as "hinge" figures, Jewish men whom Rembrandt presents as recognizing the Redeemer. By chapter 4, a growing tension with the councilors, Pharisees, and high priests becomes evident in the scenes of Jesus's childhood and ministry in the Temple as the historical Jesus increasingly rejects the traditional Judaism of his birth. Noteworthy is a rich treasure trove of contemporary ground plans and interpretations of the Temple of Jerusalem that the authors use to identify several of Rembrandt's architectural backgrounds. Judeo-Christian conflict is resolved in chapter 5, where the body of the adult Jesus finally supersedes the Temple of Jerusalem as the site of physical sacrifice and spiritual guidance. Christian teaching and preaching, or mission, is then presented with millennial overtones starting with Jewish communities at home, the potential audiences of another Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus in seventeenth-century Holland. In the denouement of chapter 6, the internalized spirituality of Rembrandt's late works is viewed as a result of a disenchantment with institutionalized religion, either Church or Temple.

Assuming a longue durée view of Scripture, Rembrandt's Faith contributes a far-reaching analysis of the Judeo-Christian character that biblical narrative held for Rembrandt and indeed the myriad interconnections of contemporary religious preoccupations for history painting at large. Perlove and Silver's multimedia, sociohistorical approach, moving beyond strictly connoisseurial and patronage concerns, will also be appreciated by many. If the authors' characterization of Rembrandt as a man of faith is sure to be controversial, Rembrandt's Faith will nevertheless be a critical reference work for the artist's biblical iconography, for Perlove and Silver, with this magisterial monograph, underscore the dynamic significance of religion for the celebrated realism of Dutch art.