The Three Trees

Among the largest and most celebrated of Rembrandt’s landscape prints, this work was created by the artist in Amsterdam at the end of the period of his greatest professional success. The panorama is sufficiently naturalistic to have been identified as a view near Diemerdijk, outside Amsterdam, which is just visible on the distant horizon. The main image of three trees silhouetted against a light sky, however, is a dramatic invention. This element awakens in the viewer thoughts of the Crucifixion at Calvary, and the fierce rainstorm reinforces the mood of that reference.