_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45.
A characteristic piece of "Bible by candle-light." There is, however,
something spiritually instructive, as well as technically skilful,
in the way in which such light there is all proceeds from Him who
came to be the light of the world: compared with this divine light
that in the lantern of the shepherds pales and is ineffectual. The
picture is dated 1646. For the most part, however, the picture is a
piece of pure realism, which may be contrasted in an instructive way
with the essentially religious art of earlier schools. Here there is
little, if any, symbolism, and "the decorative qualities with which
a painter like Botticelli appealed to the imagination to heighten
the impressiveness of the story have vanished also. In their stead
we have pure naturalism,--naturalism of a very refined and cultured
order, which appeals to the imagination as powerfully, but in a
totally different way. The charm of the picture is independent of any
exegetical qualities. Rembrandt treats the Nativity as a natural event,
in a scientific spirit. The only connection between this picture and
religious art is that it represents certain conventional attributes
which are common to both. But just so much as we subtract from it as
an exponent of strictly religious thought, just so much must we add to
it as appealing to the intellect in general; its impressiveness, its
sublimity, and its suggestiveness, and it has all these, are evolved
out of the phenomena of natural effects by a poetical process" (J. E.
Hodgson, R.A., in _Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 42).