Let the Little Children Come to Me by Rembrandt

Let the Little Children Come to Me by Rembrandt, 1627

Christ among the crowd

The subject comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10: people bring young children to Jesus, the disciples turn them away, and Jesus tells them to let the children come. Rembrandt packs the scene into a crowded yard under a brick archway, with a classical column at the right and a glimpse of buildings through the arch.

Christ sits low at the right, wrapped in a red and pink mantle, his feet bare, a pale halo behind his head. He does not look at the children. He looks up toward a young mother in blue at the centre, who holds a baby in white against her bared breast. Around his knees and in front of him crowd the children: a small girl in a stiff blue-and-gold brocade dress, a curly-headed toddler in grey, and in the foreground a naked child seen from behind, one hand holding a garment. Behind them an old man with a long white beard and a red cap gestures toward Christ, and a ring of faces presses in from every side — bearded elders, women in headscarves, figures in turbans. At the far left a tall figure in a dark red robe and fur hat stands with his back half turned, framing the group.

At the upper right a young man in white leans over a ledge to look down on the scene. It was this figure, identified as a self-portrait, that led to the painting's attribution.

Rediscovery

The painting came to public attention when it appeared at the Lempertz auction house in Cologne on 17 May 2014, catalogued as "Netherlandish School, mid-17th century". It sold for €1,508,000 including premium. The Amsterdam dealer Jan Six is credited with recognising it as an early Rembrandt, on the strength of the young man at the upper right. Several specialists, among them Christopher Brown of the Ashmolean Museum, accepted it, and it has been dated to Rembrandt's years in Leiden, around 1627, when he was about twenty-one.

At the time of the sale much of the picture was hidden under later overpaint, which restoration removed. The overpainting had covered the naked child in the foreground and had turned a man's turban into a Dutch soft cap. Technical study also showed that Rembrandt left the painting unfinished and that another painter completed parts of it later; the curator Christiaan Vogelaar has suggested that some of the finishing may be by Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert. The man under the archway at the back and the woman looking out between two other figures were modelled on Rembrandt's father and mother.

The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon has linked the subject, and the people in non-European dress in the crowd, to the refugees who came to Leiden in 1626 fleeing the Thirty Years' War.

Exhibition and sale

The painting was shown in the exhibition Young Rembrandt at Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden from November 2019 and at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from February to June 2020. It was offered at Sotheby's in London on 1 July 2026, with an estimate of £8–12 million, and sold for more than $10 million.

About this image

The image reproduced here shows the canvas after restoration, with the later overpaint removed; the naked child in the foreground, hidden in 2014, is visible again.

The painter

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden on 15 July 1606 and trained with Jacob van Swanenburg and Pieter Lastman. He died in Amsterdam on 4 October 1669. This picture belongs to his earliest years as an independent painter, alongside works such as The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1625) and Balaam and the Ass (1626).

Sources: Wikipedia, Suffer little children to come unto me · Wikimedia Commons, File:Rembrandt-Young-children.jpg · Artprice, Rembrandt: a restored early painting sold for over $10 million at Sotheby's London on July 1, 2026 · Wikipedia, Rembrandt