If you read the museum’s description of this painting you might be given to believe that Rembrandt created it in the midst of a traumatic personal struggle, and that such struggles were something he regularly suffered from, the only relief being his art.

Framing the artist in this way, while very romantic, is actually wrong. Rembrant was a stone cold businessman, and this painting is a testimony to that.

The main way that Rembrant made his money was through his commissioned paintings; the problem being that for some of those commissions he just duplicated his previous work. This isn't Rembrant’s original Decent from the Cross. His first one was done in 1633 for a man by the name of Prince Frederik Hendrik. This one is nearly an exact replica of the first, made only a year later. So Rembrant was literally pumping these out with all the capitalistic shamelessness of an industrial era factory owner.

Ironically, “industrial era factory owner,” is actually kinda what Rembrant became, as not only was he mass producing his work, but also he was using child labor. Okay, maybe they weren’t exactly children, some were fully trained artists like Carel Fabritius, however Rembrant did have a butt-load of pupils whom he exploited ruthlessly. Records indicate that he had around forty to fifty of them at a time and the kicker is that, while they did work for him, he didn’t pay them...they paid him! Furthermore, they weren’t even allowed to put their name on the work they did for him. 

Now to be fair, Decent from the Cross is still a gorgeous piece, and Rembrant’s use of lighting is just amazing enough that he can get away with creating these works on an industrial scale. Moreover this work in the baroque style would qualify as a piece of “Counter-Reformation art,” something that the church was paying justifiably well for at the time. However, if anyone ever tries to tell you that these works came from some deep spiritual place within the artist, just remember that Rembrant basically charged student loans.