The Toilet of Bathsheba by Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2010

Artist: Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam)

Title: The Toilet of Bathsheba

Date: 1643

Medium: Oil on wood

Dimensions: 22 1/2 x 30 in. (57.2 x 76.2 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913

Accession Number: 14.40.651


Catalogue Entry:

This panel is one of several finely painted cabinet pictures made by Rembrandt during the 1640s. The subject of Bathsheba is from the Bible (2 Samuel 11-12) and was common in northern European art from the early sixteenth century onward. Its popularity derived, in part, from the inclusion of a nude female. The theme also carried strong moral associations: King David (barely discernable in the distant palace) spies on and falls in love with the beautiful Bathsheba and arranges for her husband to be killed in battle. He is reprimanded by the prophet Nathan; the child he and Bathsheba had conceived dies, and David repents. Rembrandt painted another work of this subject, about 1632; it is now lost, though known through a copy in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Rennes. His great canvas in the Louvre of 1654 introduces a mood of portending tragedy quite distinct from this earlier treatment.

The background of the picture is abraded and the head and torso of the servant are badly worn. However, the foreground and the figures of the old woman and Bathesheba are well preserved, and cleaning of the picture in 1995 revealed an autograph work. Some scholars, beginning with Gerson in 1968 [see Refs.], had considered it a product of the workshop with, perhaps, some retouching by Rembrandt. An etching by Jean Michel Moreau the Younger, dated 1763 (MMA 62.695.125; see Additional Views) clarifies the original effect of space and illustrates how much detail has been lost. A later print by Le Grand [see Ref. Basan 1781] largely agrees with the Moreau etching. However, an etching by John Burnet [see Ref. Smith 1836], dated 1815, shows the background in approximately its present state, indicating that the painting had been drastically overcleaned in the intervening years. [2010; adapted from Ref. Liedtke 2007]


Gallery Label:

Two servants prepare Bathsheba for her assignation with King David (2 Samuel 11:2–27), who is barely discernable on the roof of his palace in the left background. The painting's precisely descriptive technique, although more familiar from Rembrandt's work of the 1630s, recalls two other history pictures of the early 1640s, "The Visitation" of 1640 in the Detroit Insititute of Arts and "The Woman Taken in Adultery" of 1644 in the National Gallery, London. Unfortunately, the background of the Museum's picture was badly worn during cleaning in the past; its original state is suggested by an engraving of 1763, when the panel was in the famous collection of Count Brühl in Dresden.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...