Virgin and Child with the cat and snake thumbnail 1
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Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level F , Case EDUC, Shelf 9, Box F

Virgin and Child with the cat and snake

Printing Plate
1654 (etched)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Rembrandt was probably the most important and influential European etcher of all time. Another artist has gone over some of the lines making up the Virgin's hands, but otherwise the majority of the lines on the plate were created by Rembrandt himself in 1654. There are also some areas of the plate that have become worn, such as a patch on the Virgin's temple. A print was last made from this plate in 1906.

The V&A holds an early state of an impression from this plate, Museum number CAI.646. The plate was being printed from until 1906, during which period many of the plates were reworked to prolong their life.

The composition is partly based on an engraving of the Virgin and Child by Antegna Mantegna.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Titles
  • Virgin and Child with the cat and snake (popular title)
  • The Holy Family with the Serpent (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Etched copper printing plate
Brief description
Etched copper plate. Rembrandt van Rijn. The Virgin and Child with the Cat and Snake, Netherlands, 1654. Varnished to prevent further printing.
Physical description
A domestic interior with fireplace to the left, also in the room a trunk and chair, the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Christ in the centre of the scene, behind her a window through which Joseph is looking. To the right a cat playing with a snake. The setting and costume are contemporary to the artist.
Dimensions
  • Height: 9.65cm
  • Width: 14.6cm
  • Thickness: 1.04mm
  • Weight: 124g
  • Plate thickness depth: 1mm (max)
Style
Marks and inscriptions
  • 44; 30 (Numbered thus on the back. One of these numbers is likely to have been scratched on by Henry-Louis Basan (d. before 1819) one time owner of this plate (see Hinterding p.33).)
  • Rembrandt. f. 1654.
Gallery label
This is the copper plate which produced the etching on the right. Impressions were taken from it from 1654 to 1906. During that time certain lines on the plate wore down and ceased to hold ink. For example a small circular blank patch has appeared on the Virgin's temple on the plate. This area is filled with parallel lines in the print. Some parts of the plate have been reworked. Where the Virgin's arm cradles the back of the infant Jesus, there are lines not in the early impressions of the print. On the whole the plate is in excellent condition and the amount of wear and reworking is very small in relation to the whole composition. Acquired with the aid of grants from the Friends of the V&A and National Art Collections Fund Printmaking Techniques Gallery, Henry Cole Wing
Credit line
Purchased with Art Fund support and the Friends of the V&A
Object history
Notes made by Liz Miller on the RP. No 93/399 on Basan Receuil impression, c.1810, British Museum, 157*b.26.[Plate taken to the BM on 31/1/94.]

"1. Wear on forehead (circular patch)
2. New lines on chin
3. No signs of cross hatching to right of Christ's back
4.Lost shadow of Mary's face on Christ but lines maybe still there?
5. Bottom hand gone. Lattice of Christ's back missing."

As above 1906 imprssion

"1.No sign of new horizontal hatching on right, across Mary's arm (?cosmetic for plate) that can be seen on plate.
2. Blank patch is there on forehead
3. We have lost shadow of Mary's face
4. Chin made up of criss cross lines."

Further notes on RF of comparison between V&A impression and impressions in the Fitzwillian Museum Cambridge.

From RF93/399
No plates were listed in Rembrandt's inventory of July 25/26 1656 [when declared voluntarily insolvent]. 75 plates were listed in the inventory of Clement de Jonghe, dated Feb 11, 1679. This plate is one of only thirty-two of the eighty pieces from the Robert Lee Humber collection which can be traced as far back as the Amsterdam printmaker and publisher Clement de Jonge. Aside from the Humber collection, only five other Rembrandt plates are extant; the present whereabouts of one is unknown, while another - a portrait of Jan Six - is with the descendants of the sitter.

Provenance: Clement de Jonge 1679; Pieter de Haan by 1786; Pierre Francois Basan 1786; Auguste Jean 1810; his widow; Auguste Bernard 1846; Michel Bernard, Alvin Beaumont 1906; Robert Lee Humber 1938; Artemis/ David Carritt Ltd.
Subjects depicted
Summary
Rembrandt was probably the most important and influential European etcher of all time. Another artist has gone over some of the lines making up the Virgin's hands, but otherwise the majority of the lines on the plate were created by Rembrandt himself in 1654. There are also some areas of the plate that have become worn, such as a patch on the Virgin's temple. A print was last made from this plate in 1906.

The V&A holds an early state of an impression from this plate, Museum number CAI.646. The plate was being printed from until 1906, during which period many of the plates were reworked to prolong their life.

The composition is partly based on an engraving of the Virgin and Child by Antegna Mantegna.
Associated object
CAI.646 (Version)
Bibliographic references
  • MacHardy, Caroly W. 'The Rembrandt Plates and Donald Shaw MacClaughlan'. Print Quarterly March 1993, vol X, no 1. pp.47-53.
  • Hinterding, Erik. The history of Rembrandt's copperplates with a catalogue of those that survive., Zwolle, 1995.
  • Bartsch, Adam von. Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l'oeuvre de Rembrandt Vienna, 1797. no.63.
  • Strauss, W. L. 'The Puzzle of Rembrandt's Plates'. Essays in Northern Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begeman on his Sixtieth Birthday. Doornspijk, 1983, p. 261-267.
  • Coppier, A.C. Les eaux-fortes de Rembrandt. Paris, 1917, p. 128.
  • Bartsch, Adam von, 1757-1821. The Illustrated Bartsch. New York : Abaris Books, 1978, 63.
Other number
B.63 - Le Peintre-Graveur
Collection
Accession number
E.655-1993

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Record createdDecember 18, 2002
Record URL
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