La veste di Giuseppe portata a Giacobbe

Il mantello di Giuseppe portato a Giacobbe; gruppo di quattro figure accanto alla porta, Giuseppe seduto.

Acquaforte e puntasecca, 1633 circa, firmata in basso a destra "Rembrandt/ van. Ryn. fe".

Splendido esemplare, stampato su carta vergata coeva, rifilato vicino alla lastra. Esemplare nel primo stato di due, prima del ritocco a mezzotinto.

“Rembrandt's etching of Joseph's Coat Brought to Jacob is the earliest of three etchings of similar size dating from the 1630s in which the artist depicted different episodes from Joseph's life. The story of Joseph's bloodied coat and his brothers' plot against him is recounted in Genesis 37:18-34. Joseph’s brothers, jealous of Joseph's place in their father's affections and angered by the dreams he had described, in which they had to pay homage to him, plotted against him. After discussing whether or not to kill their brother, they compromised by throwing him into a pit. However, when a group of Midianites passed by on the way to Egypt, Joseph's siblings decided to sell their brother to the merchants, instead of leaving him to perish. In order to explain Joseph's disappearance, the siblings devised a plan to make their father, Jacob, believe that Joseph was dead.  After slaying one of the goats that they were tending, they dipped Joseph's many-colored coat--a gift from Jacob to Joseph-in the animal's blood. When Jacob was presented with the bloody garment, he recognized it as Joseph's and concluded that his son had been torn to pieces by wild beasts. Overcome by grief, Jacob “rent his clothes and put sackcloth upon his loins and mourned for his son many days. “Although Rembrandt's interest in the story of Joseph is confirmed by the existence of two later prints in which he depicted other events in the young man's life, the authorship of this particular print has been called into question. A perceived lack of subtlety in  transitions from light to shadow, as well as the schematic quality of the cross-hatching on Jacob's stone bench, caused some early Rembrandt scholars to question exactly what role Rembrandt played in the creation of this etching, Rembrandt's authorship was rejected by Hans Singer and Dimitri Rovinski without further attribution, while C. H. Middleton and Woldemar von Seidlitz attributed the print to Jan Georg van Vliet. Unlike these historians, Ludwig Münz saw the master's hand in the etching, but suggested that Rembrandt had developed the print in two stages. Minz dated the first stage (of which there are no extant impressions) to c. 1629, and the second to 1632-33. According to Minz, Rembrandt was assisted by pupils when he reworked the plate. Petra Jeroense concurs with Münz's view that assistants played a role in the creation of the etching. Arthur M. Hind and most modern scholars, including Christopher White and Karel Boon, J. P. Filedt Kok, and Erik Hinterding,' author of the etching. The dating of the print is based on the other hand, have concluded that Rembrands was the sole on stylistic considerations and the manner in which it is signed Rembrandt used his patronymic "van Rijn" only during the period of 1632-33. There are not many earlier depictions of the biblical episode in which Joseph's bloodied cloak is presented to Jacob. The two most notable Dutch painted versions are by Jan Pynas and Claes Cornelisz. Moeyaert. Both of these paintings, however, represent a moment in the biblical account that takes place slightly later than the one highlighted in Rembrandt's etching. Rembrandt portrays Jacob's dramatic initial reaction to the "evidence" of his son's death, whereas the paintings illustrate Jacob's grief after ward when "all his sons, and all his daughters, rose up to comfort him." In the two paintings, Jacob is surrounded by members of his family and curious onlookers, Rembrandt, however, chose to follow the graphic tradition represented by the woodcut illustrations that appeared in fifteenth-century editions of the Biblia pauperum, a more sophisticated woodcut by Lucas van Leyden  from around 1517, and an early seventeenth-century biblical illustration engraved by Antonio Tempesta. These examples focus on the moment in which Jacob is first shown the bloodied cloak, and the number of actors is accordingly many fewer than in the paintings. In fact, in the Lucas van Leyden print, there are only two figures, Jacob and a shepherd holding up the cloak. None of these earlier images communicates Jacob's agony as strongly as Rembrandt's version. In fact, the emotional power of that etching is one of the strongest arguments in favor of Rembrandt's authorship.

The print focuses on four characters: Jacob; an elderly woman who is presumably Leah; and the two men who show the bloodied coat to Jacob. All four are grouped together on the threshold of a rustic house. There has been some disagreement as to whether the men proffering the coat are Jacob's sons or emissaries sent by them. Donna Hunter and Shelley Perlove have proposed that the men presenting the bloodstained coat are Jacob's sons: Reuben, a figure with wildly tousled hair and a face cast into shadow, who stands and points, and Judah, a balding man with a purse hanging conspicuously from his belt, who kneels at Jacob's feet.16 The familiarity with which the standing man leans into Jacob's space as the old man grieves might indicate that this is, indeed, one of Jacob's sons, not an unrelated messenger. As the man speaks to Jacob, he gestures broadly back to his left, presumably indicating the place where the coat was found, His gesture also directs the viewer's attention to two barely visible men standing in the distant landscape, one in light, and one in shadow, If the t wo young men hovering near Jacob are messengers, then the men in the distance could be two of the brothers who dispatched them. Another possibility is that the far-off figures, one of them wearing a turban and the other a flat hat are two of the merchants to whom Joseph was sold. Jacob's distraught reaction to the bloodied coat's significance is extraordinarily moving. He throws his arms up in a classic gesture of despair, tosses his head back, and seems to wail with grief. As he recoils from the cloak that signifies his son's death, it is as if he has received a physical blow. He looks up toward the heavens as if to protest--or appeal---to God. By contrast, in a curious reversal of the norms of gendered emotion, the elderly woman standing behind him is rather restrained in her reaction to the news. She leans forward, looking not at Jacob but at the coat, and brings her outstretched hands together as she begins to speak. There is no clear precedent for including Jacob's wife Leah--Joseph's stepmother- as a witness to this painful deception. Indeed, her inclusion in the scene seems to be Rembrandt's own invention, possibly in order to provide an emotional contrast to Joseph's father. Her odd calmness makes the image of Jacob's inconsolable grief all the more powerful” (Charles M. Rosenberg “Rembrandt’s Religious Prints”, pp. 110-115).

Bibliografia

The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450-1700 (122. I); Hind, A Catalogue of Rembrandt's Etchings; chronologically arranged and completely illustrated (104); White & Boon, Rembrandt's Etchings: An Illustrated Critical Catalogue (38).