The Resurrection

This was one of the last pictures Rembrandt delivered in the Passion series that Frederik Hendrik, the stadtholder in The Hague, had ordered years before, and it ran very late. What survives of the wrangling is a handful of letters to the prince's secretary Constantijn Huygens, the only letters by Rembrandt anyone has, in which he explains the delay, presses for his money and asks that it be handed over in Amsterdam. He had reason to want it there. In January 1639 he committed to a house on the Breestraat for 13,000 guilders, a debt that stayed with him for the rest of his life. The painting itself is all upheaval, the guards falling backwards as an angel heaves the lid of the tomb aside. It came to Munich in 1806 with the pictures of the Düsseldorf gallery.