{
"data": {
"id": 162193,
"accession_number": "2002.10",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Blindness of Tobit: The Large Plate, 1651. Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606\u20131669). Etching and drypoint; sheet: 16.3 x 13.2 cm (6 7/16 x 5 3/16 in.); platemark: 15.8 x 12.9 cm (6 1/4 x 5 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2002.10",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Blindness of Tobit: The Large Plate",
"creation_date": "1651",
"creation_date_earliest": 1651,
"creation_date_latest": 1651,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Netherlands"
],
"technique": "etching and drypoint",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "laid paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Prints",
"collection": "PR - Etching",
"type": "Print",
"measurements": "Sheet: 16.3 x 13.2 cm (6 7/16 x 5 3/16 in.); Platemark: 15.8 x 12.9 cm (6 1/4 x 5 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.163,
"height_inch": 6,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 0.132,
"width_inch": 5,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.1875
},
"platemark": {
"height": 0.158,
"height_inch": 6,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.25,
"width": 0.129,
"width_inch": 5,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": "I/II",
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 204986,
"title": "Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014).",
"opening_date": "2014-03-09T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 203146,
"title": "Monotypes: Painterly Prints",
"description": "Monotypes: Painterly Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (May 31-October 11, 2015).",
"opening_date": "2015-05-31T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Earl of Aylesford (Lugt 58); John Heywood Hawkins (Lugt 3022); Duke of Buccleuch (Lugt 402); [sale London, Christie's, 19-22 April 1887 lot 1777, bought by Danlos, Paris]; Alfred Str\u00f6lin; [sale Klipstein & Kornfeld, Bern, 7 June 1961, lot #20 bought by C.G. Boerner]; Private Collection, Germany, 1961-91; Joseph Ritman, Amsterdam; [sale Artemis and Sotheby's, no. 19, New York, 1995]",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Having sent Tobias to collect a debt, a blind Tobit knocks over his wife\u2019s spinning wheel and gropes for the door in his excitement to see his long-absent son. Rembrandt selectively inked and wiped the plate of this beautiful impression to enhance the scene\u2019s meaning. The dark ink left behind the figure accentuates Tobit\u2019s isolation and makes his beard-the only area of the print without any ink-seem even brighter, dramatizing the father\u2019s anguished expression. Tobit\u2019s shadow is cast by the firelight onto the wall to the far left of the doorway, symbolizing how far he has strayed from his goal and the poignancy of his condition.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79985990"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2002.10-the-blindness-of-tob"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Franklin, David. The Cleveland Museum of Art. London: Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd., 2012.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 42 - 43",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Watkins, Catherine Bailey. Rembrandt's 1654 Life of Christ Prints: Experimentation, Tradition, and the Question of Series. 2011.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 2015, fig. 84",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Monney, Gilles, Camille Noverraz, and Vincent Barras. Pierre Decker: me\u0301decin et collectionneur. Lausanne : E\u0301ditions BHMS, 2021.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 74-75",
"url": ""
}
],
"catalogue_raisonne": "White-Boon 42, Bartsch 42",
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2002.10",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2002.10/2002.10_web.jpg",
"width": "726",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "605174",
"filename": "2002.10_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2002.10/2002.10_print.jpg",
"width": "2763",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "9094868",
"filename": "2002.10_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2002.10/2002.10_full.tif",
"width": "4960",
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"alternate_images": [
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"print": {
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"date_created": "2007-01-09T15:33:06",
"annotation": ""
}
],
"creditline": "Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 162193,
"creators": [
{
"id": 2520,
"description": "Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606\u20131669)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1606",
"death_year": "1669",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2002-03-04T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1651,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1651",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": "Watermarks are integral features of many Western papers and their origin in handmade papers dates to the late 13th century and the Fabriano paper mill in Fabriano, Italy. Initially watermarks may have been intended to provide information about features such as sheet size and paper quality. Quickly, however, watermarks evolved into symbols indicating geographical origin or trademarks for specific paper mills or papermakers. There are many types of watermarks including simple circles and crosses, and more complex designs including heraldic emblems, human figures, common animals and mythical creatures, and plant life. Designs often include letters and over time words became common as well. Some papers feature both a primary watermark (usually an image) and a secondary watermark (often letters or a word) called a countermark.
Studying watermarks to learn more about the origins and dates of works of art on paper has a long history. With respect to Rembrandt\u2019s more than 300 etchings made between 1626 and 1665, rigorous watermark research has yielded remarkable discoveries and insights into dates and chronologies of the prints, their plates, and states; the origins of the papers; workshop practices; and how the prints were marketed and dispersed. In addition to identifying posthumous impressions, watermark evidence has revealed impressions printed during Rembrandt\u2019s lifetime but outside of his jurisdiction. Rembrandt\u2019s etchings and their papers and watermarks continue to generate new questions, fuel research, and build scholarship. See E. Hinterding, \u201cRembrandt as an Etcher, volume I: The Practice of Production and Distribution,\u201d Studies in Prints and Printmaking 6 (Sound and Vision Publishers, 2006).
To contribute to the corpus of watermarks already catalogued, a radiographic imaging technique called beta radiography was used to record the watermarks in the CMA\u2019s holdings of Rembrandt etchings. Among the museum\u2019s 98 etchings printed on European papers, 34 prints had a watermark or countermark, ranging from complete to partial to fragmentary.
A beta radiograph provides a high-contrast, true-to-size photographic negative of the linear designs that were attached to the paper mold\u2019s wire cover. In Rembrandt\u2019s day the wire cover on a paper mold comprised closely spaced horizontal laid lines and widely spaced vertical chain lines and formed a type of paper called laid and chain or simply laid. We call the design formed by the added wire that sits proud of the mold\u2019s cover a watermark but technically the entire wire design impressed from the mold\u2019s cover into the wet paper pulp during sheet formation is a watermark.
As the sheet is formed, less paper pulp is deposited on the raised wires, while more pulp is deposited in the cavities; therefore, in the fully formed sheet the paper is thinner and more translucent along the wires and denser between them. The beta radiograph records this pattern of lighter and darker areas in reverse.
The process of making a beta radiograph of a watermark in a sheet of paper requires a beta plate, which is a small thin plastic sheet (polymethacrylate) labeled with carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon, a single-sided emulsion radiographic film, and a work of art on a thin to medium thick paper that contains a watermark. Centered on the watermark, the items are assembled in a stack; layered from the bottom to the top, first is a sheet of bare film with the emulsion side up, then the art with the image side up, and finally the beta plate. To ensure good contact and minimize air gaps which deteriorate image quality, a weight, typically a piece of glass, is placed on top of the beta plate. (Due to the need for direct contact and slight pressure on the face of the artwork, beta radiography cannot be used with certain types of drawing media.) The layering of materials must be done with a photographic safelight and then the actual exposure, typically between 45 and 90 minutes, is done in complete darkness. As the C-14 decays it emits negatively charged beta particles (\u2013\u03b2), essentially electrons, which penetrate the paper to expose the film on the other side. The ease with which the beta particles can penetrate the paper depends on density; in thinner areas the film receives more exposure and in thicker areas less exposure. The advantage of beta radiography over other radiographic processes used for imaging watermarks is that the design mediums (and their elemental compositions) typically do not interfere with how the beta particles interact with paper and the film, and therefore beta radiographs provide clear, high-contrast contact negative images of just the paper structure. For more information see: D. Kushel, \"Radiographic Methods Used in Recording of Structure and Watermarks in Historic Papers,\" in Fresh Woods and Pastures New: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Drawings from the Peck Collection, edited by F. W. Robinson and S. Peck (Acland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 117\u201323. Another feature that shows up clearly as discrete white areas in the beta radiographs are denser areas of paper. These denser areas correlate with extra thickness due to paper attachments on the back of the print, most notably the paper hinges used for mounting.",
"has_conservation_images": true,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 08:25:19.958000"
}
}