Die Grablegung Christi

This small, almost colourless panel is tied to the biggest commission of Rembrandt's early career: a set of Passion scenes for Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, arranged through the prince's secretary in The Hague. Rembrandt worked it up in the mid-1630s as one of a handful of near-monochrome oil sketches, laying in the burial of Christ in browns and greys, a lantern lighting the faces bent over the body. There are signs he came back and reworked the panel years later. Its other distinction is quiet but real. Bought by the Glasgow physician and collector William Hunter in 1771, it was the first painting by Rembrandt to enter any British collection.