THE SCARIEST PICTURE

Toward the end of last October, it seemed to me I saw one of the most frightening pictures in art.  Granted once or twice, forgetting it was near Halloween, I had been startled by young retail clerks looking up from their counters in zombie make up. I was unnerved in the “Spirit” store by their dominant display theme of undead babies. But in any case, I was struck by 2.5 x 3.75 inch 1640 etching by Rembrandt shown above (click to enlarge all pictures), that was at the San Francisco Legion of Honor in the exhibition “Masterworks of Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection.“

It is a reticent picture of vulnerability, made more affecting by its realism. This puppy is not “our” puppy, a bundle of warm fur made to be hugged, or a performer of tricks. It is too deeply animal for that. (Compare it to the irresistibly tactile painting by Gerard Dou also in the show, said to be made after Rembrandt’s etching.)

Still, Rembrandt’s little dog calls out for our protection. Given nature’s determined confidence, it is supremely unaware of its own fragility, accentuated by being new to the world, and further by being asleep.

Young as it is now with its delicate ears and wrinkled face, the puppy’s mastiff-heavy skull and compact muscular body point to its future. Growing up under its master’s care, we trust the dog will live out its vigorous days happily and in full. A half-conscious anxiety for its well being lingers in the background though, as we watch it slumbering: given all efforts to protect it from the many dangers of life, from falling objects to microbes to unkind neglect, Rembrandt’s recognition of the puppy’s separate life suggests that chance and its ultimate fate remain beyond our reach.

I don’t think Rembrandt was a connoisseur of mortality as one writer put it, but as with Shakespeare, the awareness of mortality is always there. In Rembrandt’s work, as he gets older, its shadow deepens with his ever increasing sympathy for his subjects, whether they are participating in an anatomy lesson or featured in a sketch from his neighborhood. Rembrandt lived 63 years. “The Puppy” was made when he was 34.

Can a little etching of animal vulnerability be more frightening in the end than a selection of pictures famous for their disturbing power  – say Munch’s “The Scream,”  “St Anthony’s Temptation by Demons in the Desert,” by Grunewald, a gargoyle from Notre Dame in Paris, and “Saturn Devouring his Children,” by Goya?

 

        

These images are truly the stuff of nightmares. But given our knowledge of life and stories, each of these works, while delivering a shock, implies a way out. While we flee from the visions they create inside our heads, there does always seem to be one more corridor to turn down, one more door to force open which could lead to escape.

Munch’s apoplexy of anxiety might be helped by a gifted therapist and the best medication, or (to be flippant) a year in the South of France. The pitiless gargoyle could lose in a battle with armed angels. St Anthony can resort to prayer and the mental discipline honed through his years meditating in the desert, to stave off the madness that the demons threaten. Saturn will not extend his reign indefinitely by devouring his children. Zeus will trick him, and a new generation will survive to take succession, including those already eaten. In any case, the Titan’s eyes betray a horrified awareness that his lust for power is turning him from a principle of nature (albeit wild) into a monster. His more Hellenic victim will prevail.

But there is no way out of the Rembrandt, no enemy to defeat, no threat to defuse. Its puppy condition is our human condition. The ultimate danger surrounding the dog doesn’t inspire adrenaline but acceptance, of which a dose of human fear is naturally a part.

Our instinctive unease regarding its safety is subsumed in our impulse to treasure Rembrandt’s wonderfully observed puppy. But this tender etching, which at first seems as calm as quiet sleep, is absorbingly complex. From an artist who was as incapable of false comfort as he was gifted at communicating compassion, it might still rightfully scare you, depending on when you look at it.