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Original etching printed in black ink on laid paper; signed and dated in the plate lower left Rembrandt f.1638
A strong 17th century/lifetime impression of Bartsch’s third and final state, Usticke’s second state of five, New Hollstein’s third state of six, printed after the addition of the shading to the face of the man behind Joseph (“Le viage noir”), as well as to the curtain and the door upper right, but before the close shading was added posthumously to the blank space between Joseph’s left arm and the face of the woman.
Catalog: Bartsch 37 iii/iii; Hind 160; Biorklund-Barnard 38-E; Usticke 37 ii/v; New Hollstein 167 iii/vi
4 5/8 x 3 ¼ inches / Trimmed down to the platemark on all four sides, otherwise in very fine condition.
Joseph was the son of Jacob and Rachel, the story of whose life was regarded as prefiguring that of Christ. The seventeen-year-old’s interpretation of his own dream, in which his brothers’ sheaves of corn bowed down to his own sheaf, increased his unpopularity among them (Genesis 37). When he again dreamt that “the sun and the moon and eleven stars made obeisance to me” – the dream being interpreted in this etching – they finally decided to do away with him.
In the etching’s crowded composition Joseph is at the center of things facing the viewer. Jacob seated at the left, Rachel reclining in bed, and a younger woman with an open book seated on a chair at lower right listen attentively to Joseph, who makes the pantomimed bowing gesture appropriate to his dream narrative. Nine brothers are present, while a tenth, with whom another brother is communicating, is represented only by his fingertips on the tabletop at the right borderline. Huddled together in the right background, the brothers – one holds a shepherd’s staff – respond to Joseph’s tale with conspiratorial whispers or a mocking expression. According to the pictorial tradition, it is unusual for a young woman to be present, but she must be Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter. There is a dog before the fire at the lower left corner, but the dog is attentive only to his fleas.
