Rembrandt van Rijn's "The Return of the Prodigal"

“Rembrandt van Rijn was the greatest Dutch artist of his time, and ranks as one of the master-painters of the world. He worked within the pious Protestant ethos of the 17th-century Netherlands, yet his art has a rare universal quality that is capable of appealing to all men and women,” opens Douglas Mannering’s The Art of Rembrandt.
Thus far we’ve been studying for Picture Study in my class at Clapham one of his most well-known and celebrated biblical paintings, “The Return of the Prodigal,” which portrays the touching moment from Jesus’ parable when the wayward son is clasped by his loving, waiting father, even as the elder brother and servants look on. While it is not how many of us might have pictured the scene, Rembrandt’s vision is undeniably vigorous in its expression and its message must have been powerfully felt by Rembrandt himself.
John Durham provides moving a moving interpretation from the perspective of faith in his book The Biblical Rembrant: “it is the father’s face that is the heart of this painting: a face of such compassion and tenderness, a face suffused with so much relief mingled with love, a face glowing with a transcendent light.”