The boy walks hand in hand with both parents and looks up.
Bible in art · Luke
Christ Returning from the Temple with His Parents
Rembrandt · 1654
The Cleveland Museum of Art
A tiny etching from 1654, part of a group of prints on the childhood of Jesus that Rembrandt made in the mid-1650s. The plate is less than 15 centimetres wide.
The boy walks between his parents, holding their hands and looking up. Joseph, in a wide hat, leans on a staff; Mary looks down. Behind them the road winds back past a rocky hill toward the city and a group of riders.
From the text
- “Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51)
- The parents’ search for him in Jerusalem (Luke 2:45–48)
The artist’s own
- A walking family of his own day: a broad-brimmed hat, a long staff and a dog at their heels
Details
Between them
Mary
Mary walks with lowered eyes, her head wrapped in a cloth.
Joseph
Joseph in a broad-brimmed hat, leaning on a long staff.
The dog
A small dog trots along the road beside them.
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669). The Cleveland Museum of Art (John L. Severance Fund, 1971.34) · Etching and drypoint · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).