Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

A very fine lifetime impression of the second state, with the lower sides of the ladder were burnished in, as well as a ray of light in the upper left corner. Before the rungs of the lower part of the ladder burnished in. The four etchings of this series were created by Rembrandt to accompany a Spanish-language treatise by his friend and neighbour, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657). In the text, Menasseh reflects on a mysterious stone that appears at key moments in the Hebrew Bible: it shatters the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, serves as a pillow for Jacob’s vision of the ladder, and is used by David to defeat Goliath. He interprets the stone as a symbolic foreshadowing of the Messiah. The final illustration depicts Daniel’s apocalyptic vision of the four beasts, where the figure of the redeemer emerges. Originally, all four scenes were etched onto a single plate, which was later divided. With thread margins around the platemark. – Faint handling marks, otherwise in very good condition.