The Circumcision

By 1661 Rembrandt was in his mid-fifties and years past the bankruptcy that had cost him his house and his collection. You can read that moment in the paint itself, thick and dragged, worked in places with the handle of the brush, a late manner some of his contemporaries found rough. The subject is the eighth day after the Nativity, when the infant Christ was circumcised. Rembrandt sets it in the shadow of a stable rather than a temple, the humble place he had used for the birth, and he makes one quiet change to tradition by having Mary rather than a priest hold the child. This was the first shedding of Christ's blood, and the small ritual is made to point ahead to the Cross. A single warm light picks out the group and lets the rest of the stable fall into darkness. It reached Washington with the Widener collection.