The descent from the cross by torchlight.

This etching dates from relatively late in Rembrandt's career. It is part of a series of scenes from the Passion of Christ that he created around 1654. It is a reprise in reverse of the famous 1634 painting of the same theme in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, and the related, larger scale 1633 etching made with Jan van Vliet (B. 81), but with even more dramatic, earthier figures within darkness.

Rembrandt diverges from traditional representations of the Descent from the Cross by focusing on the silent activity of taking down the dead Christ, using a linen sheet. Another linen sheet covers the foreground stretcher, for carrying the body to its burial place. Only the bottom portion of the cross is visible on the left, and Christ's head is in partial shadow. The figures that carry him and the hand that reaches up from the darkness to support his head are depicted in bright light. Details further away quickly vanish into the darkness of the night.

Te Papa's impression is the second of four states, only the first being by Rembrandt. It dates from the 18th century: two dots, the identifying mark of an unknown publisher circa 1700, were added in this state (2). It was, however printed before 1797- c. 1809, when the plate belonged to the Parisian workshop of Henry Louis Basan, which issued state 4.