Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn is the greatest Dutch artist, painter, etcher, and draftsman. Born in Leiden, he studied there with Jacob van Swanenburg, then in Amsterdam with Pieter Lastman. Rembrandt created paintings on religious and mythological subjects, portraits, and landscapes. The art of the master is realistic and humanistic. It marked the top of the Dutch art of the 18th century having embodied in exquisite artistic forms the high moral ideals and belief in the beauty and dignity of ordinary people.

During the years 1633-1639 Rembrandt created a cycle of   The Passion for the Stadtholder Frederik Hendrik van Orange. It consisted of three paintings: The Raising of the Cross (1631-1633, Munich), The Crucifixion (1631, Munich) and The Deposition (1633, Munich). In 1633 Rembrandt made an etching called The Deposition.

This etching The Deposition was conveyed to our museum by the Pushkin Museum of the Fine Arts in 1990. Imbued with a deep, fully experienced feeling, masterfully embodied in tangible volumetric forms, the master’s work became an oppositional response to the idealized interpretation of religious themes that were then dominant in European art.