Rembrandt’s Religious Prints

Organized in conjunction with the 175th anniversary of the University’s founding, this exhibition features over seventy etchings by this master printmaker given to the Museum in 1991 by Jack and Alfrieda Feddersen of Elkhart, Indiana. Their collection focused on Rembrandt’s religious and biblical subjects making it an especially fitting gift to the University.  The exhibition coincides with the publication of a comprehensive catalog of the Snite Museum's holdings of Rembrandt prints co-published with Indiana University Press and written by Professor Emeritus Charles Rosenberg. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether you go or not, Rembrandt's Religious Prints: The Feddersen Collection at the Snite Museum of Art presents Rembrandt’s stunning religious prints, which stand as evidence of the Dutch master’s extraordinary skill as a technician, and as a testament to his genius as a teller of tales. Here, several virtually unknown etchings, collected by the Feddersen family and now preserved for the ages at the University of Notre Dame, are made widely available in a lavishly illustrated volume. Building on the contributions of earlier Rembrandt scholars, noted art historian Charles M. Rosenberg illuminates each of the 70 religious prints through detailed background information on the artist’s career as well as the historical, religious, and artistic impulses informing their creation. 

Includes an impression of the earliest work, The Circumcision (1625-26); the famous Hundred Guilder Print; the enigmatic eighth state of Christ Presented to the People; one of a handful of examples of the very rare final posthumous state of The Three Crosses; and an impression and counterproof of The Triumph of Mordecai. From the joyous epiphany of the coming of the Messiah to the anguish of the betrayal of a father (Jacob) by his children, from choirs of angels waiting to receive the Virgin into heaven to the dog who defecates in the road by an ancient inn (The Good Samaritan), Rembrandt’s etchings offer a window into the nature of faith, aspiration, and human experience, ranging from the ecstatically divine to the worldly and mundane. Ultimately, these prints― modest, intimate, fragile objects―are great works of art which, like all masterpieces, reward us with fresh insights and discoveries at each new encounter.

Select Rembrandt's Religious Prints: The Feddersen Collection at the Snite Museum of Art to learn more on Amazon.