Beggar Man and Woman Conversing
1630
17th Century
2 1/2 in. (6.4 cm)
Rembrandt van Rijn,
Dutch,
(1606–1669)
Object Type:
PRINTS
Creation Place:
Europe
Medium and Support:
Drypoint
Credit Line:
Gift of Ann Chahbandour and Jay Robert Stiefel
Accession Number:
96-G-3200
Label for "Printmakers of the Baroque: 17th-Century Explorations of Space and Light", La Salle University Art Museum, December 16, 2013 – February 28th, 2014:
The elderly man and woman, dressed in ragged clothes, interact in a civil manner with one another. The satchel around his waist and the basket on her arm suggest that despite their poverty, they have a place in the economy of 17th-century Netherlands.
Impoverished peasants were popular subjects in the 17th century. But beggars, society’s marginalized citizens, were less frequently represented in art. Attitudes towards social outcasts in the Protestant Dutch society were complex. The good beggar was one who was the recipient of generous community charity. Different from the roaming vagrant, he/she was known to a community, but was expected to be invisible to it. In the early 1630s, Rembrandt van Rijn, who came to be known just as Rembrandt, illustrated them in a compassionate way. The artist may have identified with beggars because, throughout was life, he was anxious about his finances.
Irene Martinez, '14, and Kelly Sheehan, '15
Current Location:
In Storage
by Artist
by Artist
