The Story
The Hundred Guilder Print is an etching with drypoint by Rembrandt, measuring 278 x 388 mm (platemark). The etching's popular name derives from the large sum of money supposedly charged for it. It is also called Christ healing the sick, Christ with the Sick around Him, Receiving Little Children, or Christ preaching, since the print depicts multiple events from Matthew 19 in the New Testament, including Christ healing the sick, debating with scholars and calling on children to come to him.
The rich young man mentioned in the chapter is leaving through the gateway on the right. Unusually, especially for such an ambitious work, Rembrandt did not sign it, and some parts of it seem "somewhat unresolved". The complexity of different techniques and "variety of styles" in the Hundred Guilder Print have suggested to some art historians that Rembrandt worked on it over a long period in the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge.
Executed in oil on canvas, measuring width: 63.5; height: 76, the surface rewards close looking. Jan Steen builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Baroque practice.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
