Biblical Images
Rembrandt produced about twenty etchings between 1642 and 1647, including his most ambitious landscape, The three trees (1643) and his most refined portrait etching, Portrait of Jan Six (1647). Only six of his etchings from these years are religious subjects, but they culminate in one of his most celebrated works, the so-called 'Hundred Guilder Print' (Christ healing the sick).1 Throughout his career, Rembrandt must often have assigned biblical subjects as a training exercise for students, since numerous workshop drawings and paintings of such themes are preserved. Yet, for those few who ventured into etching, only a handful of biblical prints have been identified.2
Hollstein lists two New Testament subjects in Van Hoogstraten's graphic oeuvre, but the first, Presentation in the Temple, must be rejected. Hollstein based his attribution on an auction record from 1914 listed in Frits Lugt's Marques de collections. This document must refer to a large etching, now in the Rijksmuseum, that bears the inscription 'S.v.Hoogstraaten / 1645' and the appropriate collector's mark on the verso. Lugt notes that the auction record listed the print as 'unique', and no other impressions are known to us. The content and composition are indebted to Rembrandt, but the edges of the image are deliberately uneven and the plate includes a remarque (a separate sketch) in the upper margin depicting a landscape with a village, boats, and a windmill. These artistic features only became popular much later, and we concur with the cataloguers of the Rijksprentenkabinet's database that this is in fact a nineteenth-century etching, based on a lost design that was thought to be by Van Hoogstraten.
More convincing is the attribution of a plate that bears two inscriptions (partially concealed by hatching), 'S.v.Hoogstraten' on the edge of a wooden desk at lower right and '1648' at lower left [20]. The figure standing behind the desk, wearing a feathered turban, is a Rembrandtesque type anticipated by the tiny tronie discussed above; here, he is Pontius Pilate. While Hollstein entitled this print 'The Jews before Pilate', Van der Coelen has convincingly demonstrated that it depicts a specific scene recorded in John 19:19-22, concerning the inscription Pilate plans to post on Jesus's cross. In an effort to discredit Jesus, the Pharisees demand that Pilate change 'King of the Jews' to 'I am King of the Jews', but Pilate refuses. While no version of this subject by Rembrandt has been found, it was popular among history painters in his orbit, notably Salomon Koninck, who depicted it at least three times.3 Van Hoogstraten may have based the print on one of his own drawings created while he was in Rembrandt's workshop, or soon thereafter. His awareness of Rembrandt's expressive etching style is reflected in the contrast between passages of open linework for the figures, with schematic treatment of some faces, and dense cross-hatching that embeds the action in a shadowy interior. Compare, for instance, The angel departing from the family of Tobias, dated 1641 [21]. Van Hoogstraten's print is rare, but it may have attracted some interest; a reworked impression is in the Albertina, Vienna.4
Van Hoogstraten's most successful independent prints are two depictions of apostles: John the Evangelist and Thomas [22][23]. The plates are initialled 'SvH' but undated. Here, Van Hoogstraten creates substantial, nuanced figures and etches them with greater confidence. Developed in two known states for each plate, background tone is built up with layers of sinuous hatching. The figures, especially their faces, are sensitively rendered. The first state of Apostle Thomas, known in a unique impression in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, is faintly signed in the lower margin '... Hoogstraten. p.', suggesting that this print reproduces a now lost painting by Samuel himself. If so, apart from the grisaille for his self-portrait in the Inleyding, this would be the only documented instance of Van Hoogstraten basing a print on one of his own paintings. John the Evangelist bears no such inscription (the initials 'SvH' appear within the image in reverse), but clearly complements Apostle Thomas in format.5 In their final states (shown here), both plates are inscribed with couplets alluding to the familiar legends of the saints: for John, his exile on Patmos and devotion to Christ, and for Thomas, his conversion from doubt and his martyrdom. Their attributes, a chalice for John, a book and spear for Thomas, are also conventional; Van Hoogstraten could well have been familiar with prints depicting the apostles by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533), Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), and others.6 Saintly figures, especially elderly scholars, were also frequent subjects in Rembrandt's circle.7 As a pair, the two historical figures may present instructive opposites: John the most faithful of disciples, touched by divine intervention, and Thomas the doubter whose weakness and repentance provide an accessible role model for everyday believers.8
Another saint with a spear, Longinus, presides over a celestial congregation of saintly martyrs in an illustration to De Roomschen Uylenspiegel ('The Roman Owlglass'), a treatise written by the respected Dordrecht preacher Jacobus Lydius and published in Dordrecht by Simon Onder de Linde in early 1671 [24]. A doctrinal debate between Lydius and the Jesuit theologian Cornelius Hazart gave rise to an exchange of polemical pamphlets, of which this is one; both authors use the nocturnal owl as a metaphor for spiritual blindness.9 The illustrations in Lydius's book, consisting of a title page and five frontispieces, have been attributed to Van Hoogstraten.10 The artist certainly knew the author: Lydius had baptized Van Hoogstraten into the Reformed faith in 1657, along with his wife, Sara Balen, and her sister Cornelia.11 While the title page and the final illustration (depicting a demonic figure) are crudely executed, the frontispieces for Parts 1-4 (Longinus introduces Part 2) are somewhat close in style to Van Hoogstraten's illustrations for his own publications (discussed below). However, the plates are unsigned, and other contextual factors argue against the attribution. From 1667 to 1671, Van Hoogstraten lived in The Hague and was busy painting portraits of elite citizens. He would only return to Dordrecht after buying a house there in September 1671.12
20
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Pilate refuses to alter the title on the cross (John 19:21-22), dated 1648
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-12.785
21
Rembrandt
The angel departing from the family of Tobias, dated 1641
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-83
22
Samuel van Hoogstraten
John the Apostle
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-12.786
23
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Apostle Thomas
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-12.787
24
Anonymous Northern Netherlands (hist. region) before 1671
Longinus, before 1671
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-1896-A-19090
Notes
1 The Hundred Guilder Print is undated but assigned to ca. 1648. For a thorough assessment of the print, see
2 P. van der Coelen, 'Biblical iconography in the graphic work of Rembrandt’s circle’ in Dickey 2017A, pp. 273-275 and p. 282, no. 15, with further references.
3 Ibid., passim (for Koninck, see pp. 277-278).
4 An impression in the Rijksprentenkabinet bears the collector's mark of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland 1806-1810, and may have belonged to Baron van Leyden; see Lugt 240. A second impression is in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, inv. 6567; Blanc 2008, p. 396. Copy in the Albertina, Vienna.
5 A previously unpublished and so far unique first state of John the Evangelist is in the British Museum. The impression of the first state of Apostle Thomas in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, was cited by Hollstein and by Blanc, but both misread the 'p.' as 'f.'.
6 The chalice alludes to the legend that John was given poison to drink but miraculously survived. Thomas was said to have been murdered with a spear by a pagan priest in India. Also typical is the portrayal of John as a handsome youth and Thomas an aged scholar.
7 See Wheelock 2005. Willem Drost (1633-1659) portrayed himself as a youthful St. John, with chalice in hand, in a painting now in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. He studied with Rembrandt c. 1650, but the self-portrait was probably painted later, while he was in Italy. The figure in Van Hoogstraten's print also bears a resemblance to the angel in the painting Hagar and the Angel in The Leiden Collection (on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art); it is attributed to Carel Fabritius (1622-1654), who studied with Rembrandt alongside Van Hoogstraten.
8 Some modern theologians have interpreted John's gospel as a refutation of Thomas's ideas; see, for instance, E. Pagels. Beyond belief. The secret gospel of Thomas, New York 2003.
9 An example of the book can be found in the Royal Library, The Hague. It also appeared in several later editions, with copies of the illustrations. Hazart's rebuttal, Onsteltenisse van den gereformeerden kercken-raedt, ende gemeente van Dordrecht. Over het uyt-geven van den Roomschen uylen-spiegel, en van den nachtuyl, sijnen autheur, was published in Antwerp the same year.
10 Hollstein Dutch & Flemish 1949-2010, vol. 9, p. 142, no. 29 (without describing the illustrations).
11 Roscam Abbing 1993, p. 52, cat. no. 47.
12 Ibid., p. 69, cat. no. 92; attribution rejected, p. 60, cat. no. 71, n. 2. Not listed in Blanc 2008.