The Meeting of Christ with Martha and Mary after the Death of Lazarus (c. 1662–65): Art, History and Details

The Meeting of Christ with Martha and Mary after the Death of Lazarus (c. 1662–65) 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:

Scholars now consider this drawing a rare, late work by Rembrandt. Here, Christ meets with Martha and Mary after the death of their brother, Lazarus (John 11:30–36). The composed dignity of Christ's face and his calm compassion contrast with the prostrate figure of Mary and the agitated drawing of the kneeling Martha, whose outstretched hands are repeated three times, suggesting a frenzied expressivity. Above Martha, white gouache obliterates the figure of a standing man as well as a first version of Martha's head. The combination of rough power and sublime tenderness that characterizes Rembrandt's late drawing style is here demonstrated in the dramatic rendering of the sisters' grief and the sensitive portrayal of the bearded old man who dries his eyes with a kerchief at the right.

Object facts

• Title: The Meeting of Christ with Martha and Mary after the Death of Lazarus
• Date: c. 1662–65
• Creator attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: reed pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white gouache (in the heads of the kneeling figures)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 17.5 x 20.8 cm (6 7/8 x 8 3/16 in.); Secondary Support: 17.5 x 20.8 cm (6 7/8 x 8 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1962.116

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Benesch, Otto. “A Drawing by Rembrandt from His Last Years.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 3 (March 1963): 42–45.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.