Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch, 1606-1669
Christ Presented to the People, 1655
drypoint (state v/vii)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection 1964.8.1863

View state: v/vii | vii/vii

This plate yielded one of Rembrandt's most prized sequences of states. The early steps show only minor alterations. Before a stagelike proscenium a motley rabble confronts the lonely figure of Christ, mocking him with gestures all the more sinister for being offhanded and mundane. Brute passages of drypoint delineate the figures in the crowd with a remarkable bluntness, ranking them among the finest examples of draftsmanship anywhere in Rembrandt's art.