Elsje Christiaens Hanging on a Gibbet

From $40.43

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NOTE: All Giclee prints on PAPER are printed and cut to exact size. If you would like extra paper around your print please let us know. We can add an extra 1/4" or 1/2" of paper on all sides upon request. This selection does not apply for the stretched canvas or framed products.

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Description

Elsje Christiaens’s small suspended figure hangs beside the vertical pole of a gibbet in Rembrandt’s brown-ink drawing. The limited setting gives her body a stark presence rather than surrounding it with a crowded historical spectacle. Quick marks preserve the immediacy of looking, making the image an encounter with a named young woman whose death was publicly displayed.

Drawn in 1664 in pen and brown ink with brush and wash, the work records Elsje after her execution in Amsterdam. She had killed her landlady during a dispute over rent, and the ax was displayed with her body. Rembrandt gives the terrible scene a concentrated material form, allowing the viewer to encounter its human consequence without an expansive narrative setting. The drawing’s force lies in the meeting of swift observation and the stillness of the figure.