The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

Two hands

The son kneels with his back to us, head shaved, one shoe gone, and the father bends over him with both hands on his shoulders. Look at the hands: the left is broad and strong, the right is slender and gentle — a father's hand and a mother's, on the same back. To the right the elder brother stands and watches, hands clasped, unable to join in. Everything else is in shadow. Rembrandt painted it in the last year or two of his life, bankrupt and bereaved, and it is the picture people mean when they say he understood forgiveness.

Henri Nouwen's book of the same name, written after days in front of the canvas, made it one of the most reflected-upon paintings in Christianity.

The Hermitage

Bought for Catherine the Great in 1766, and in the Hermitage in St Petersburg ever since.

About this print

Made from the Hermitage's photograph of the painting, 8,140 pixels tall.

Sources: State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, ГЭ-742 · Wikidata Q512755 · Wikimedia Commons