Article June 18, 1910 Issue

THE NAZARENE

EDEN TATEM.

In an obscure corner of the Louvre is a little picture, timid, almost awkward in execution, as though the hand of the artist had faltered under the intolerable burden of his aspiration, tarnished in color, its canvas petty and insignificant, yet so original in conception, so startling in its dramatic intensity that it is numbered among the masterpieces of a man whose absorbing passion was the expression of light. "Christ at Emmaus" would of itself attest the genius of Rembrandt—not Rembrandt the magnificent realist, but Rembrandt the idealist of baffling vision, for the great Dutch painter was both.

It is the memorable moment in which the stranger who breaks bread with Cleopas and the other disciple at Emmaus suddenly reveals himself to their grief-laden hearts as their Master, that Rembrandt has attempted to portray. The room is dim with the shadows of gathering twilight. One of the disciples, overcome with awe and reverent understanding, has clasped his hands; the other, his gaze fixed on the countenance of their guest, has started back from the table, his whole being intensified into an exclamation of inarticulate amazement. Across the rude table, upon the hands of the Nazarene arrested in the act of breaking the bread, and over his uplifted face, where the traces of past torture are still faintly visible, there pours a light inexplicable, unforgettable—a pale, pure radiance, hushed, holy, expectant.

In pilgrim garb, the face wan, but transfigured by the intensity of that look which burns with the fire of a consecrated spirit unshaken by the agony of the flesh, tremulous in its gratitude, childlike in its humility, unassailable in its peace,—the Nazarene of Rembrandt is a living, breathing human being, with the indefinable expression of one who has recently passed through death and rent triumphantly asunder the veil of its giant illusion. Softly blended with the mystery of that look, wrought from within out into the delicate contour of brow and cheek, the light, fugitive as an arrested vision, seems to radiate from the Galilean's thought, burned pure, welded, shaped, made perfect by a power infinitely divine.

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