Portrait of Dr. Ephraim Hezekiah Bueno

Rembrandt van Rijn

1647

Portrait painting of a bearded man in collar and wearing hat facing viewer standing on a staircase with his right arm resting on a balustrade.
Rembrandt van Rijn lived in the part of Amsterdam where the artists’ guild (St. Luke’s Guild) was located. By coincidence, it was also home to a number of Jews. Rembrandt’s artworks attest to an interest in the biblical past. This portrait is thought to be of Ephraim Bueno (1599–1665), a prominent member of the Portuguese Jewish congregation, but we do not know what, if any, relationship there might have been between Bueno and Rembrandt. Bueno belonged to a Sephardic family that had settled in the Netherlands. This portrait is one of two extant ones of him by Rembrandt.

Credits

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1647. De joodse arts Ephraim Bonus Ephraim Bueno.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

Rembrandt van Rijn

1606–1669
Rembrandt von Rijn is considered one of the greatest artists of all time. Born in Leiden in the Netherlands as the son of a prosperous miller, he apprenticed with a local painter and an artist in Amsterdam as a teenager and eventually set up his own studio in Amsterdam. He pioneered a new way of using light and shadow. Rembrandt soon became the city’s most sought-after portrait artist, but despite his fame, he experienced financial difficulties and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1656. Near the end of his life, he increasingly painted self-portraits. In addition to portraits, Rembrandt’s more than three hundred known paintings include historical and biblical scenes and landscapes.

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