32 REMBRANDT This painting is one of a series of portraits of the apostles that bear the date 1661. HARMENSZ. VAN RIJN The portraits were apparently not meant to be hung together, as they are of varying Dutch, 1606-1669 sizes, and it is unlikely that the artist ever depicted all twelve of Christ's disciples. The Saint Bartholomew, 1661 existence of this series suggests that Rembrandt was perhaps personally preoccupied Oil on canvas with the apostles' significance at this time, just eight years prior to his death. 86.5 x 75.5 cm. (34 x 29¾ in.) Each of the known portraits gives the impression of having been painted from a At bottom right, signed Rembrandti'f.1661 model, probably a friend or neighbor, a practice that Rembrandt normally followed. 71.PA.15 The idea that a common man could be identified with a biblical personage and thereby lend a greater immediacy to Christ's teachings would have been in keeping with the religious atmosphere in Amsterdam at the time. Saint Bartholomew is represented with a mustache and a broad, slightly puzzled face. The stolid, rather pensive, and very ordinary men that Rembrandt often chose as models for these paintings would not be precisely identifiable as individual saints were it not for the objects they hold in their hands—in this case a knife, a traditional attribute referring to the fact that Bartholomew was flayed alive. Their clothing, which in its simplicity is meant to connote biblical times, is very different from the crisp collars and suits worn by the seventeenth-century Dutch upper classes. Saint Bartholomew is rendered in the broader, freer style of the artist's late maturity. He has used palette knives and the blunt end of his brushes in depicting the saint, and his technique is much more direct than that of any of his contemporaries. The history of the interpretation of the Museum's painting is of some interest. In the eighteenth century it was thought to depict Rembrandt's cook, in keeping with the taste for everyday subjects, especially servants and humble occupations, that characterized French art of the time. In the nineteenth century, a period enamored of dramatic or tragic themes, the saint was thought to be an assassin, a reading to which the knife and the subject's intense look no doubt contributed. BF 60 DUTCH AND FLEMISH SCHOOLS