Thought for the Week: Rembrandt van Rijn

Ruth Tod reflects on Rembrandt van Rijn

by Ruth Tod 9th January 2015

The exhibition of the late work of Rembrandt, held in the National Gallery in London over the past four months, has been an extraordinary experience for the thousands of people who have visited it.

When I walked around the exhibition with others who had come to see the work of the seventeenth century Dutch master I felt that a sense of quiet veneration was absorbing us all. I stood before Rembrandt’s full-size later self-portraits and was humbled and empowered in the presence of his vulnerability and inner wisdom. Amongst all those people, I just waited there: I in his presence and he in mine.