Belshazzars Feast

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Belshazzars Feast: Rembrandt

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Rembrandt Oil Painting - Belshazzars Feast

Keywords: Belshazzars, Feast

Work Overview: Belshazzar's Feast
Artist Rembrandt
Year 1635
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 167.6 cm × 209.2 cm (66.0 in × 82.4 in)
Location National Gallery, London

Belshazzar's Feast is a painting by Rembrandt housed in the National Gallery, London. The painting is Rembrandt's attempt to establish himself as a painter of large, baroque history paintings.

The story of Belshazzar and the writing on the wall originates in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar looted the Temple in Jerusalem and has stolen the sacred artefacts such as golden cups. His son Belshazzar used these cups for a great feast where the hand of God appeared and wrote the inscription on the wall prophesying the downfall of Belshazzar's reign.

The inscription on the wall is an interesting element in this painting. Rembrandt lived in the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam and "derived the form of Hebrew inscription from a book by his friend, the learned Rabbi and printer, Menasseh ben Israel, yet mistranscribed one of the characters[3] and arranged them in columns, rather than right to left, as Hebrew is written."[1][4] This last detail is essential as it relates to the question of why Belshazzar and his advisers were not able to decipher the inscription and had to send for Daniel to help them with it.[5] The biblical story does not identify the language of the cryptic message, but it is generally assumed to be Aramaic, which, like Hebrew, is written in right-to-left rows, and not in right-to-left columns as in the painting. Although there is no accepted explanation why the Babylonian priests were unable to decipher the writing,[6] the point of this unconventional arrangement – reading the text in the painting in the conventional row-wise left-to-right order results in a garbled message – may be to suggest why the text proved incomprehensible to the Babylonian wise men;[7] indeed, this explanation is in accordance with the opinion of the amora Shmuel, which is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, 22 a, among various dissenting views. However, it seems unlikely that Rembrandt would have known this, as there is no evidence to suggest he was proficient in the Talmud.

Rembrandt's handling of painting materials and his painting technique in Belshazzar's Feast are both exceptional and do not compare to any of his other works.[8] The palette of this painting is unusually rich encompassing such pigments as vermilion, smalt, lead-tin-yellow, yellow and red lakes, ochres and azurite.

Rembrandt's source for this painting, the Old Testament Book of Daniel (5: 1-6, 25-8), tells of a banquet Belshazzar, King of Babylon, gave for his nobles. At this banquet he blasphemously served wine in the sacred vessels one of his predecessors had looted from the Temple in Jerusalem.

Rembrandt shows the moment when a divine hand appeared and wrote on the wall a phrase only Daniel could decipher. When transliterated the inscription reads: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation: 'God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians.' That very night Belshazzar was slain.

Rembrandt derived the form of Hebrew inscription from a book by his friend, the learned Rabbi and printer, Menasseh ben Israel, yet mistranscribed one of the characters and arranged them in columns, rather than right to left, as Hebrew is written. The picture, probably painted about 1636 or slightly later, is an example of Rembrandt's attempt to establish himself as a painter of large-scale Baroque history paintings.

The Chaldean ruler Belshazzar organizes a feast and uses the silverware his ancestor Nebuchadnezzar stole from the temple in Jerusalem. During the feast a hand appears that writes on the wall. Belshazzar consults his experts to discover the meaning of the writing, but to no avail. Only Daniel can read it – according to Rembrandt and a rabbi he consulted because the words were written vertically.

This writing is indeed the writing on the wall – the very next day the sacrilegious king is struck dead.

The meaning of the writing is explained at the end of Daniel 5.

Late in the 1640s Rembrandt began to watch Jews more carefully, and to characterize them more deeply than before. Rembrandt had the opportunity to study the Jewish population of Amsterdam. From the time he purchased his large house in the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat (later the Jodenbreestraat) in 1639 until he was forced to sell it in 1658 he lived on the edge of the largest Jewish community in Holland. Among his Jewish acquaintances were the distinguished rabbi, author, and printer Menasseh ben Israel and the physician Ephraim Bonus; he made portraits of Bonus and perhaps one of Menasseh too. Menasseh, who lived near Rembrandt, commissioned the artist to illustrate one of his own books and he most probably provided him with the form of the cryptic Aramaic Menetekel inscription from the Book of Daniel that appears on the wall in his spectacularly dramatic Belshazzar's Feast.

The scene illustrates chapter 5 of the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Belshazzar, King of Babylon, gave a great feast at which wine was drunk in the golden and silver vessels looted by his father Nebuchadnezzar, from the temple in Jerusalem, and 'gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone...which see not, nor hear, nor know' were praised while God himself was not glorified. And there 'came forth fingers of a man's hand and wrote...upon the plaster of the wall'. Only the Jewish seer Daniel was able to read the supernatural inscription MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN which foretold the defeat - in fact, the death - of Belshazzar that same night and the partition of his kingdom among the Medes and the Persians.

Rembrandt's intense familiary with the physiognomies of the Spanish Jews (the Sephardim) and the Eastern Jews (the Ashkenazim), who were allowed to live in Amsterdam in relative freedom during the seventeenth century, helped him to enrich his biblical representations. His interest in them was not merely a romantic and pictorial one. To Rembrandt the Jews were the people of the Bible, and with his deepening realism he wanted to become more authentic in his biblical representations. He found among them inspiration for mildly passive and emotional characters, and he also studied the harder and more intellectual types, who show the perseverance of the Jews and furnished models for his figures of the Pharisees. Even more remarkable is the series of portraits of Jesus made around the same time which are based on a Jewish model. Rembrandt, it seems, was the first artist to derive his Christ-type from a personal study of Jews.

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