Rembrandt

Etching, with engraving and drypoint, 1659

In the most powerful erotic etching of Rembrandt's late period, the god Jupiter has transformed himself into a satyr and crept into the bedroom of the young princess Antiope. Before waking her he lifts away the sheet and admires her sleeping body.

Though conforming also to the conventional appearance of a bearded satyr, the face is undoubtedly that of Rembrandt himself.

Transformed into a satyr, he appears rather younger and a good deal more jovial than in his monumental self-portraits in oil of the same period, such as those in New York (Frick Collection, 1658), Washington (NGA, 1659) or Edinburgh (National Gallery, 1659).

Rembrandt's relatively few prints of the female nude were made in two periods: the early 1630's (including his smaller Jupiter and Antiope of 1631) and six in 1658-61. This last group were almost the last etchings he made, and all are concerned with the depiction of light and dark shade on the body. In one (B205) all the nude is so deep in shadow in the second state of the print that Bartsch entitled it Negress lying down, although it is clear from the first state that the model was white.

Several of these prints were made in several states, and Rembrandt also produced impressions within states that are varied considerably by using different papers and by surface tone.

This is where, instead of wiping the plate completely clean between printing each impression as was normal, selected areas were left unwiped or wiped lightly. A thin film of ink remains on the surface of the plate, which prints a greyish tone between the black etched lines. At about the same period he also produced the fourth and final state of his Three Crosses (B 78), arguably his greatest print, using the same means of experimenting on the press.

This print inspired one of Picasso's most famous prints, the Faun Unveiling a Sleeping Woman of 1936, where the very similar pose of the figures is seen as from the end of the bed. That image was also reworked through six very different states.

Size of reproduction:
135 x 204 mm, 5 5/16 x 8 1/16 inches

Print price:
£30    €44    $48

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© The Trustees of the British Museum 2006 PD 1910-2-12-368 Bartsch 203