An Elderly Man in Prayer (1660s or later): Art, History and Details

An Elderly Man in Prayer (1660s or later) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Toward the end of his life, Rembrandt explored religious themes from an intimate perspective, producing a number of works for a possible Apostle series. The personal religiosity of An Elderly Man in Prayer, formerly attributed to Rembrandt, bears resemblance to such late works. Seated with eyes nearly closed and hands clasped in prayer over a large book, the figure appears still and introspective. While the dramatic lighting and dark color palette are reminiscent of Rembrandt's late works, this painting, formerly attributed to the artist, has since been assigned to a follower or a later eighteenth-century imitator of Rembrandt's style for reasons associated with the broad, flat brushwork of the garment, the poor handling of shadow on the hands, and the uniform treatment of the hair.

Object facts

• Title: An Elderly Man in Prayer
• Date: 1660s or later
• Creator attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 119.4 x 106.7 x 15.9 cm (47 x 42 x 6 1/4 in.); Unframed: 87.3 x 72 cm (34 3/8 x 28 3/8 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1967.16

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Rembrandt: Old Man Praying.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (December 1967): 295–301.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.