The bearded man kneels and tips out a round wooden measure.
Bible in art · Ruth
Boaz and Ruth
Rembrandt · c. 1645
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt made this small pen sketch about 1645, with fast, broken lines and a few touches of white.
Boaz kneels and empties a round wooden measure of barley onto the shawl that Ruth holds out on the ground. She bends over to watch. There is no threshing floor and no night — only the two figures and the grain.
From the text
- Ruth holding out her shawl (Ruth 3:15)
- Boaz measuring “six measures of barley” into it (Ruth 3:15)
The artist’s own
- A round wooden grain measure of the kind used in Dutch markets
- Boaz kneeling to pour, not standing
Details
Boaz
The barley
A heap of grain on the shawl spread on the ground.
Ruth
She bends forward and watches, holding the edge of her shawl.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch, 1606–1669. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Gift of C. Hofstede de Groot, The Hague; RP-T-1930-9) · Pen and brown ink, with opaque white · Image: "Public Domain" (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/); object metadata: CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) — Rijksmuseum Linked Art record.