Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

Rembrandt’s oeuvre is full of works, mostly historical narratives, which
depict a crucial moment in a dialog or a speaker in front of a captivated audience.
Julius Held has noted Rembrandt’s new and unusual handling of speaking
situations: Unlike other painters before him, who depicted more than one person
speaking in order to portray a central point in a conversation, Rembrandt shows
only one person speaking while the other(s) are intensely listening. 193 Their
silence is thus just as important as the words spoken; their “mute presence serves
[…] to sharpen the psychological effect of the action” (Held 172). For example, in
the two famous paintings about Joseph accused by Potipha’s wife (1655), one in
the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, the other in the National Gallery in Washington, it is
only the woman, Iempsar who speaks, accusing Joseph, who listens quietly, and
whose “mute presence” underscores his innocence and his faith. But there is also
one painting in which the written word plays a central role. In Belshazzar’s Feast
(c. 1635, London, National Gallery), Rembrandt shows the moment after
Belshazzar has commanded that the gold and silver from his father
Nebuchadnezzar be brought, and when the writing on the wall appears with a
message of doom. But the painting focuses not so much on the writing itself as on
the reaction of astonishment and fear and it provokes in those present. In these
and other works, then, Rembrandt explores the agency of the word and the power
of speech.
193 Julius Held, “Das gesprochene Wort bei Rembrandt,” Neue Beiträge zur Rembrandt-
Forschung, eds. Otto von Dimson und Jan Kelch (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1973) 111-125. See
also the works under the heading “Rembrandt als Erzähler” in the Rembrandt, ed. Klaus Albrecht
Schröder and Marian Bisanz-Prakken (Wien: Albertina; Wolfratshausen: Edition Minerva, 2004)
220-88.
172