The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1654): Art, History and Details

The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1654) 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:

Rembrandt often illustrated the intimate meaning of biblical events. Here Simeon, to whom "it was revealed ... by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ," holds up the infant Jesus toward the High Priest, a frail figure who allows the prayer book to slip from his grasp. At the left, the Virgin Mary and Joseph humbly kneel in the shadows, while a priest with an enormous crozier towers over all. To Rembrandt, light symbolized divinity and spirituality. By using an unsystematic network of fine crosshatching in the background and by varying the density of groups of parallel lines on the figures, he created an evocative atmosphere where forms emerge from shimmering half-lights. Rembrandt's ability to create a rich pictorial effect with linear means can only be fully appreciated in superb impressions such as this one, where the drypoint accents are fresh and strong and the nuances of the shading are perfectly realized.

Object facts

• Title: The Presentation in the Temple
• Date: c. 1654
• Creator attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching, drypoint and engraving
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 x 16.3 cm (8 1/4 x 6 7/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1999.3

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major Benin Bronze Plaque, Rembrandt Print, Other Works of Art Enter CMA Collection,” March 12, 1999, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Glaubinger, Jane. "The Printmaker's Art." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 40, no. 7 (September 2000): 8-9.
• Glaubinger, Jane. "The Experimental Rembrandt." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 41, no. 1 (January 2001): 6-7.

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.