Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn lived in early modern times; our knowledge of him has many gaps. For example, he is known as the “painter of the soul” for his unsurpassed biblical and Christian art, yet we know little about his personal faith beyond what can be guessed from his paintings.

Was he Lutheran, or did he favor the dominant Calvinists of his native land, with their strict ideas of predestination? Perhaps he sided with the Remonstrants (Arminians), who emphasized human free will. Some art historians have argued he was an Anabaptist because he had associations among the sect, but that is unlikely: he had all his children baptized as infants, which runs counter to Anabaptist theology. His pictures never incorporated conventional Roman Catholic symbols, so Catholicism can be ruled out, too.

Whatever the specifics, he was a believer. Bob Hartley wrote, “Rembrandt made it clear that he believed in the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ as well as many other biblical events by painting himself as a participant in them.

Most famously, he painted himself as one of the executioners raising the cross at the crucifixion of Christ—as if to accept part of the blame (as each of us must) for our Savior’s death.

The general consensus among critics is that Rembrandt was a close student of the Bible, who strove to capture the essence of its stories. They give evidence that he tried to evoke the emotions of historical figures more than the exact representations of their costumes and settings. Still, he could be exact when it suited him: he used a model of the temple to place Jesus in an authentic architectural setting in some paintings and often used oriental objects as props for added verisimilitude.

He also increasingly painted Christ as an ordinary flesh-and-blood human. The result for anyone who studies Rembrandt’s biblical paintings is deeper insight into the Bible stories. As T. de Vries wrote, “The works of Rembrandt are like sermons preached in the language of art, addressing our deepest consciousness and our feelings directly, uplifting our souls to things sublime and unseen.

On this day, 4 October 1669, Rembrandt died. He was sixty-three. He was buried in Amsterdam.

Also On This Day

1965: Pope Paul VI makes an unprecedented visit to New York to plead for world peace before the United Nations.

1970: Pope Paul VI declares Catherine of Siena a doctor of the church.

1972: Bolaji Idowu is elected president of the Methodist Church, Nigeria. Among his key contributions will be a revision of the church’s constitution, making it autonomous, and unification with the nation’s Zion Methodist Church.

1994:Two Egyptian Christians, Ageeb Sami Yacoub and Ameer Sami Yacoub, having refused to pay protection money to Muslims, are bound and murdered in cold blood.