Completed in 1634 and housed in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, this impressive painting depicts the removal of Christ from the cross, following the crucifixion. Rembrandt had received a commission from the Dutch court in 1628 through Constantijn Huygens, secretary to the Prince of Orange, for five paintings of the Passion of Christ. The series eventually included these scenes: Raising of the Cross, Descent from the Cross, The Entombment, The Resurrection and The Ascension.
Rembrandt had been hired to create small versions of Rubens’ famous altarpieces Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross in Antwerp. Huygens challenged Rembrandt to produce paintings less than one-twenty-fifth the size of Rubens’ versions. Unlike the Catholic Antwerp depiction of the scene by the artist’s older rival, where Rubens depicts the witnesses keen to touch and physically take hold of the body of Christ (a powerful symbol of the Eucharist, where worshipers eat the host which they believe has been transformed into the body of Christ), Rembrandt presents an entirely different Protestant view in keeping with his Amsterdam audience. In the latter altarpiece, the witnesses to Christ’s death are more contemplative of the scene before them, as several figures stand helplessly back and ponder the lifeless form. Rembrandt instead offers a Calvinistic approach to the Descent, where the other people in the painting are more suited as observers to the scene, devoted to personal introspection, rather than the outward displays of emotion that are seen in the Rubens’ version.
Where Rubens portrayed Christ as a muscular figure, inspired by the works of Michelangelo and Caravaggio, Rembrandt opts for a much more realistic and even flabby depiction of Christ, whose body is limp and skin depicted with a lifeless, pallid hue. There is also another feature in the Descent from the Cross found in many of Rembrandt’s major works. In the figure closest to Christ, hovering over the corpse and looking down with a troubled, pensive frown, we can detect the telltale frizzy hair of the artist himself.
After the first two paintings were finished in 1633, a further commission was given for three more paintings of scenes. The first to be delivered, early in 1636, was The Ascension, the last in iconographic order, this time taking the Venetian master Titian as his model of inspiration. In a composition based on one of Titian’s most famous works, the Assumption of the Virgin in the Church of Frari in Venice, Rembrandt created an image of earth, sky and heaven, with mortals taking leave of a divine creature being raised by angels to the Godhead itself.