St. Francis Beneath a Tree Praying

One of Rembrandt’s most spiritually moving works, this drypoint and etching depicts a hermit saint sequestered in the wilderness and praying to a crucifix. A second figure on the right, a monk in bare outline, helps to identify the saint as Francis, who traveled with a friar named Brother Leo. Rembrandt focused on the lush, moody landscape surrounding the crucifix, creating space to the right of the composition by portraying a distant hill and structure. These compositional strategies reveal his knowledge of Venetian landscapes by Titian and others, which he had studied through prints and drawings. But while Rembrandt certainly looked to Italian art for inspiration and ideation, he always transformed what he saw into something distinctive and undeniably of his own invention, infused with the emotion and humanity that we see, for example, on the saint’s active face.