Compianto sul Cristo morto

Rembrandt made this around 1635, in his first prosperous Amsterdam years, while he was delivering a set of Passion scenes to the court of Frederick Henry, the stadtholder at The Hague. This one had no patron behind it. He began it as an oil sketch on paper, tore a piece out, mounted the rest on canvas and carried the design on across the join; later someone added strips at the top and bottom, and the whole assembly now sits on an oak panel. It is painted almost entirely in greys and browns, the way an etcher plans a plate, and the two thieves are on the wrong sides of the cross, which comes right only once a printed image flips. The etching was never made. Sir Joshua Reynolds owned it in the 18th century, and it reached the National Gallery in 1828 with the Beaumont gift.