The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Rembrandt van Rijn · an oil painting on canvas · an old man on a raised threshold bending over a kneeling son, both hands laid on the son’s shoulders, and at the right the elder son standing apart in red with a staff · about 2.6 by 2.05 metres, upright, the figures near life size · State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg · a late work, dated about 1661 to 1669 · the single canvas, scored as it stands; how far its right side and background were finished by the painter is an open question
Mode
History painting at near life size: a biblical parable given as one moment, its narrative apparatus withheld
Mythos
The return: exile and homecoming, the child received by the father, and in the Christian reading the soul received by God; beside it the elder brother, the faithful one resentful of grace
Phase
Late: a work of the painter’s last years, dated about 1661 to 1669, painted in a manner then out of fashion in Amsterdam
Presentation
Oil on canvas, about 2.6 by 2.05 metres, upright; the figures near life size, the kneeling son’s back at the standing viewer’s height
Register
Grave tenderness: one temperature, stillness and a few warm lights in a great dark, rising several times within one event
Scale
A father, two sons, a few witnesses; one threshold and one instant
Governing Proposition
A father, old and nearly blind, stands on the threshold of his house and closes both hands on the back of a son who kneels before him in rags, his face pressed into the father’s body and his speech unspoken; across a gap of dark floor the elder son stands upright in the same red, lit, and does not move. The wager of the painting is that a parable told as a sequence of events can be held in one still instant, that paint itself can be warmth in a pair of hands and poverty in a torn garment, and that a picture can show the lost received before they can account for themselves while leaving undecided whether the one who stayed will ever come in.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The subject is the parable of Luke 15:11 to 32. A son who has wasted his inheritance comes home with a confession ready, and his father receives him before he can make it and calls for the robe, the ring and the calf; the elder son, who stayed and worked, is the parable’s second half, and the text leaves his reconciliation open. Northern prints and paintings had made it a narrative subject, and they painted its episodes: the son among harlots in the tavern, the son with the swine, the return as an event with servants bringing the robe and the ring and the calf led to slaughter.
Rembrandt had painted and drawn it before. His etching of 1636 shows the return as a lively scene of arrival. His Dresden canvas sets himself and Saskia in the tavern as the prodigal and his company. Those works are the context of this one and are not scored here. This canvas is a late work, dated about 1661 to 1669 and generally placed among his last. It is oil on canvas, upright, about 2.6 metres by 2.05, its figures near life size, and it has been in Saint Petersburg since the eighteenth century; it hangs in the State Hermitage Museum. The work judged is this single canvas.
Everything the tradition painted is gone from it. There is no robe, no ring, no calf, no feast, no servant running. The story is stripped to one embrace in near darkness, and its two halves, the son who went and the son who stayed, are set in one picture. The narrative is turned to stillness, and the handling, broken and loaded, makes a history piece into something like an inward state. The manner was out of fashion: for a decade Amsterdam had preferred a smooth, classicising finish, and the painter worked against that preference to the end. The departure is not a new road but the far end of his own.
Movement II
At the left, on a raised threshold, the old man in a red cloak bends over the young man kneeling with his back to us, and lays both hands on his shoulders. The son’s head is shaven or cropped; his garment is torn; his face is pressed into his father’s body so that it is half lost. In the parable the son has his speech ready, “I have sinned against heaven, and before thee” (Luke 15:21). The painting does not give it. His mouth is hidden, and the father’s hands have already closed on him. Mercy comes before the confession.
The father’s eyes are lowered, or nearly shut, and he seems barely to see; he knows the son by his hands. Forgiveness is given as touch. The hands are the picture’s centre of light and of making: they are built of thick, broken paint that holds the light like warmth and reads as weight, spread on the son’s back. Whether the two hands differ, one broad and one finer, and what that would mean, is one of the questions the canvas has kept open; the painting gives no sign which reading is meant.
The red of the father’s cloak spreads round the son like a shelter, and above them the dark rises through the upper half of the canvas. It is not an abyss. It is the house without its walls, an enclosure in which the embrace is isolated and held. The elevation of the picture is here, warm and grave, the sublime of tenderness in age, and it rises in one temperature: the lit and inward face, the two hands, the cloak, the dark. Nothing in it depends on grandeur of space or on terror.
Movement III
The son kneels outside the line of the threshold, and his back is at the standing viewer’s height. One sole is bare, cracked, turned toward us, its shoe fallen behind him; the other shoe is worn through. That sole is a few strokes of paint, and it is the most abject thing in the picture and the most exact. At this size the viewer stands where a witness would stand, behind the one who returns, and is received with him: the form places the viewer inside the parable rather than before it.
The rags and the shaved skull are modelled in dragged, dry paint, scraped and broken, the texture of poverty; the father’s hands and cloak are laid in thick, loaded strokes that turn to glow. The same hand makes both, and the difference between them is the difference between the two men’s states. The paint here is not a description of warmth and want laid over a drawing. It is the warmth and the want. As a small panel, or as a smooth picture of the kind Amsterdam then preferred, the reception would become an anecdote.
The archetype the picture builds is the return, the oldest structure of exile and homecoming, and in the Christian reading the soul received by God. The canvas does not allude to it; its composition is that structure. The father stands on the threshold with the house behind him, the son kneels outside, and the viewer is set behind the son. The particulars stay particular: a shaved head, a torn shoe, an old man’s hands. The structure is Luke’s, given whole by the text, and the painting builds on it rather than finding it.
Movement IV
At the right, standing apart on the same level, is a tall man in a red cloak with a staff, lit, looking down at the embrace: the elder son, by the usual reading. The parable gives him his complaint, “these many years do I serve thee” (Luke 15:29), and the father’s answer, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31), and leaves his reconciliation open. The painting keeps it open. He stands in the same red as his father, upright, and does not move, and the gap of dark floor between him and the embrace measures what is unreconciled.
This is the picture’s second disclosure, and it rests on reading a face across a dark gap: whether he judges, grieves, or is about to come in, the canvas invites and does not compel. The red runs as one thread from the father’s cloak to his, one blood across the shadow, and the second height of the picture, cooler than the first, is his lit face. The faithful one who resents grace stands in the line of Cain and Abel and of Jacob and Esau, the parable’s own lineage, and the right half of the canvas is built round him.
Between the groups, a man sits in a hat with his hand at his breast; in the dark behind, further faces, among them a woman at the upper left, barely legible. Who they are is not established. Their paint is thinner, their places uncertain, and the floor and threshold between the groups are barely stated, so that the space does not resolve. How far the right side and the background were finished by Rembrandt, left unfinished, or completed by another hand has been raised and is not settled. Whatever their hand, they are in the picture, and the picture is charged with them: the seated man could be removed and a witness would be lost, not a meaning.
Movement V
The canvas has been in Saint Petersburg since the eighteenth century and is held in the State Hermitage Museum. It came through revolution, war and the siege of the city, and has been on view for most of that time. It was little reproduced before the nineteenth century; it is central now. Its form is whole: the embrace, the elder son, the light and the dark are all legible, and nothing that carries the meaning is lost. The open question of finish is not damage. The costume is biblical invention, not the fashion of a decade, and it dates nothing.
For a century it was seen by few painters. The late manner changed painting chiefly through the nineteenth century’s discovery of Rembrandt and through his etchings, and that reach belongs to the late work as a whole, not to this one canvas. Its own reach has been in devotional and theological culture, where it has become the image of the parable, and theological writing has made it a text in its own right. Its questions remain open after more than three and a half centuries: the onlookers, the hands, the elder son, the finish, and whether the painter stands in the father, in the son, or in both.
On this desk it stands at 8.8, above the painter’s other pages: The Jewish Bride at 8.7, The Night Watch and Self-Portrait with Two Circles at 8.5, and The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp at 8.3. It discloses more and builds more myth than the company, the self or the guild, and it trails The Night Watch on the swerve and on reach, as a private road trails a public genre turned. Michelangelo’s Pietà and van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, the two sacred images here of a body received in grief, stand at 8.9: they are more perfectly made and more consequential in their fields, and this discloses more. The Starry Night also stands at 8.9, ahead on height, departure, reach and form, behind on disclosure, myth and scope. What holds the canvas in Tier IV is its aggregate: one room, one instant, and a reach that belongs to the late manner.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged figure by figure. The father and the son cannot go: the embrace is the work, and every part of it is required, the bent head, the two hands, the son’s face pressed into the father’s body so that it is half lost, the bare sole turned to the viewer, the fallen shoe. The elder son cannot go: the parable’s second half is his, and his height, his lit face and the gap of dark floor between him and the embrace are the picture’s other argument. The great dark above is required too; it encloses the embrace. What yields is in the middle and the shadow: the seated man would be missed as a witness, not as a meaning, and the faces behind are below necessity.
Score: 8.6 / 10
What is disclosed can be stated, and it is a meaning, not a mood. Mercy comes before the confession: the son’s prepared speech is not given, his mouth is hidden in the father’s body, and the father’s hands have already closed on him. Forgiveness is shown as touch, by a man who seems barely to see, his eyes lowered or nearly shut. And the picture discloses what the parable leaves open: the elder son stands in the father’s red, lit and still, and his reconciliation is not achieved. Outside the story this holds: the lost are received before they can account for themselves, and the reception wounds the faithful. Held below the top because the second disclosure rests on a face across a dark gap, invited rather than compelled.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The elevation is warm and grave, the sublime of tenderness in age, and it is concentrated. It rises in the father’s face, lit from the left, worn and inward; in his two hands spread on the son’s back; in the son’s bare and cracked sole, the most abject thing in the picture and its most moving; and in the red of the father’s cloak, spread around the son like a shelter. A second, cooler height is in the elder son’s lit face, standing in judgement. The register is one: stillness, the dark, a few warm lights. It rises often within the one event, but in one temperature. There is no grandeur of space and no terror; the dark is an enclosure, not an abyss. High in height, held by range.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth built, and load-bearing. The archetype is the return, the oldest structure of exile and homecoming: the child who wasted his inheritance comes back and the father receives him, and in the Christian reading God receives the soul. It is not alluded to; the composition is that structure. The father stands on the threshold with the house behind him; the son kneels outside its line with his back to us, so that the viewer is set behind the one who returns. The second archetype, the faithful elder brother who resents grace, in the line of Cain and Abel and of Jacob and Esau, is built into the right half. The particulars stay particular. Held below the top because Luke gives the archetype whole, and the picture builds on a structure already built.
Score: 9.1 / 10
The inheritance is the prodigal as a narrative subject: in Northern prints and paintings the son among harlots in the tavern, the son with the swine, the return as an event with servants bringing the robe, the ring and the calf; Rembrandt’s own etching of 1636, a lively scene of arrival, belongs to it. The departure is the story stripped to one embrace in near darkness, without robe, ring, calf or feast; narrative turned to stillness; the two sons set in one picture as the parable’s two halves; and broken, loaded paint turning a history piece into something like an inward state. The stake was real: Amsterdam had preferred a smooth, classicising finish for a decade. Held below the top because the departure is the extreme of the painter’s own late road, not a new road.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Change the form and much of what the work knows goes. At this size the figures are near life, and the kneeling son’s back is at the viewer’s height: the viewer stands behind him and is received with him. The dark is form, not ground; it isolates the embrace, makes the house a presence without walls, and measures the elder son’s distance in shadow. The red binds father and elder son as one blood across the gap. The handling is knowledge: the father’s hands are built of thick paint that reads as warmth and weight, the son’s rags scraped and dragged. As a small panel or a smooth classical picture the reception would become an anecdote. Held below the top because the middle figures and the background are form without function.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Evidence over promise: after more than three and a half centuries the questions remain open. Who are the onlookers, and is the seated man a steward or another witness? Are the father’s two hands different, one broad and one finer, and if so, why? Is the elder son judging, grieving, or about to come in? Is the picture unfinished, completed by another hand, or finished as it stands? Is it a last self-examination, the painter in the father, the son or both, or a devotional image of grace? Theological writing has made the canvas a text in its own right. Held below the top because part of the yield comes from the parable and from the painter’s last years, which the viewer brings, and because the central meaning is agreed.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Published; force and reach together, within Dutch and European history painting from the 1660s on. The intrinsic force is a real reorganisation of what a history painting could do: a narrative subject turned into the stillness of an inward event, carried by the handling as much as by gesture, the late manner’s achievement in perhaps its fullest instance. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the canvas was in Saint Petersburg from the eighteenth century and seen by few painters until the nineteenth; the late manner redirected painting chiefly through the nineteenth century’s discovery of it and through the etchings, and that reach belongs to the late work as a whole. This canvas’s own reach lies in devotional and theological culture, as the image of the parable. Delayed and diffuse; at the gate exactly.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at about three and a half centuries. Form: whole. The embrace, the elder son, the light and the dark are legible, and nothing that carries the meaning is lost; the open question of finish is not damage and is not charged here. Presence: in Saint Petersburg since the eighteenth century, through revolution, war and the siege of the city, on view for most of that time, little reproduced before the nineteenth century and central now. Fabric: the darks are deep, and the technical history cannot be confirmed here. The surface is fixed to its moment in nothing that matters; the costume is biblical invention, not period fashion. High for centuries with form whole, held in the lower part of that band.
Score: 9.3 / 10
Judged as command of oil on a canvas more than two and a half metres high, and the making is load-bearing where it counts. The father’s hands and face are built of loaded, broken paint that holds light like warmth; the red of his cloak is laid in thick and scraped strokes that glow against the dark; the son’s rags and shaved skull are modelled in dragged, dry paint, the texture of poverty; the sole of the foot is a few strokes and the most exact thing in the picture. The light is managed as meaning, highest on the father’s face and the son’s back, held on the elder son, failing on the rest. The costs are charged: the seated man and the faces behind are weakly realised, and the floor between the groups is barely stated.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the kneeling son, abject, seen from behind, all browns and torn surfaces, and the elder son, upright, frontal, lit, in red and rich cloth. They obey one law. Every figure is a body emerging from one darkness into one warm light, its rank in the picture given by how much light it holds, and the same loaded hand makes rags and cloak alike. The red runs as one thread from the father to the elder son. The range is wide in feeling, from abjection through mercy to judgement, and narrow in kind: one moment, one interior. What resists is the middle: the seated figure and the faces behind obey a slacker law, thinner in paint and uncertain in place, and the space between the groups does not resolve.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The orders held are several, and the embrace and the gap integrate them: the family, a father and two sons, an inheritance and its waste; the sacred, the father as God in the parable’s reading, grace and judgement; the moral order, sin, repentance, mercy and resentment; consciousness, three figures each in a different inward state; the household and its labour, by implication, in the witnesses and in the son who stayed and served; poverty and the body, in the rags, the shaved head and the bare foot; age and death, in the old man’s face. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: no state, no history, no natural order. One room and one instant hold it, and the figure describes the form.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.3, The Made at 9.2, The Archetypal Deep at 9.1, and The Unconcealment, The Living Form and The Bottomless Well at 9.0. A canvas whole in everything that carries its meaning after some three and a half centuries; a command of oil that makes paint warmth in the father’s hands and poverty in the son’s rags; the archetype of the return built as composition, threshold, kneeling back and the brother across the dark; mercy shown before confession and the elder son left unreconciled; and a form that sets the viewer behind the one who returns.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 8.0: the family, the sacred, the moral order, consciousness, poverty, age and the household are held, and there is no state, no history and no natural order; one room and one instant. Below the rest, Pressure on Tradition at 8.5: the force is a real reorganisation of history painting, but the canvas was long unseen by painters and the reach in painting belongs to the late manner as a whole. With The Swerve and The Inevitable at 8.6, the far end of the painter’s own road and the figures in the middle that could yield, they hold the aggregate below the summit.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 8.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Imperishable at 9.3, The Archetypal Deep at 9.1, The Unconcealment at 9.0 and The Swerve at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, and Pressure on Tradition meets it exactly at 8.5. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.5, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.0. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone. The twelve sum to 106.0, an average of 8.83 that displays 8.8.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of The Return of the Prodigal Son, oil on canvas, upright, about 2.6 by 2.05 metres, a late work by Rembrandt van Rijn dated about 1661 to 1669, in Saint Petersburg since the eighteenth century and held in the State Hermitage Museum: well as an image, in its composition, colour and handling, and in its literature in outline; thinly in its technical history. Not from standing before it, and no image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the single canvas as it stands. Whether its right side and background were finished by the painter, left unfinished, or completed by another hand has been raised and is not settled; whatever was made within the work’s making is the work’s, credited or charged to it. The identities of the seated man and the faces in the background are not established. The etching of 1636 and the Dresden canvas of the prodigal in the tavern are context and are not scored. The words quoted are from the parable, Luke 15:21, 29 and 31, in the King James text; no inscription is quoted, and no words of the painter’s. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the canvas’s exact dimensions, whether it is signed or dated, the year and manner of its coming to Saint Petersburg, its movements in the war, its relining, varnish and the state of its darks, and the titles and authors of the books later written about it.