Giacobbe che lotta con l'angelo

By 1659 Rembrandt had lost almost everything. Declared insolvent a few years earlier, he had watched his grand Amsterdam house and his art collection sold off to pay creditors. He was in his early fifties and painting more inwardly than ever. He took a rarely-shown scene from Genesis, Jacob wrestling through the night with an angel, and stripped it of all detail, pushing the two life-size figures right up to the surface. What he shows is barely a fight. The angel holds Jacob about the neck and waist almost tenderly, more embrace than struggle, and Jacob's eyes are closed as if half-dreaming. The soft feathered wing filling the left of the canvas is one of the gentlest things Rembrandt ever painted.