A late 17th / early 18th century impression of Bartsch and Biorklund-Barnard's second and final state, Usticke's fifth state, printed prior to the retouching of the plate by Captain William Baillie circa 1775.

An expertly repaired and unobtrusive diagonal tear at the upper left sheet tip, the upper right sheet tip expertly made up, otherwise in excellent condition, trimmed down to or just outside the platemark all around. Literature: Michael Zell, Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam, University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 2002, p.41, no. 27 (ill.) Collections in which impression of this etching can be found: Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin-Dahlem; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; StŠdelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt-on-Main; Teylers Stichting, Haarlem; Ermitage Museum, Leningrad; The British Museum, London; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Duthuit Collection, Petit Palais, Paris; Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Muse du Louvre, Paris; Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna. Rembrandt, more than any other artist, has become permanently associated with his portrayal of Jewish subjects. Unlike van Rudisdael, de Hooghe, and de Witte, Rembrandt was primarily a figure and history painter and therefore was not drawn to the architectural expressions that marked the Jews' success in Dutch society. He and the artist's of his circle were attracted to the 'otherness' embodied by the city's Jewish residents and captured features of dress and appearance contemporaries recognized as 'Jewish difference'. Eighteenth-century sources had a tendency to map onto Rembrandt's work a taste for picturesquely Jewish subjects. In the earliest catalogue of Rembrandt's prints, a manuscript datable to about 1731, the Delft amateur and collector Vaerius Ršver assigned two etchings the titles 'The Little Jewish Bride' and the larger 'The Great Jewish Bride' (Bartsch 340). While these works are still known today by Ršver's titles, 'The Little Jewish Bride' clearly represents St. Catherine, identified by her instrument of torture - the toothed wheel seen behind her. In the first published catalogue of Rembrandt's prints, released in 1751, Gersaint explained that a string of pearls around a woman's head was the custom during the time in Holland among Jewish women about to be married. This most certainly applies to this etching in which we see a pearl headdress. Among early female saints, Catherine of Alexandria was second only to Mary Magdalene in popularity. She was of royal birth and showed great erudition from an early age. After becoming queen, she was converted to Christianity, baptized by a desert hermit, and in a vision, underwent a mystic marriage with Christ. The Emperor Maxentius, in Alexandria, desired her and tried by argument to undermine her faith; when he failed he sent fifty philosophers to try instead. The Emperor then devised an instrument of torture consisting of four wheels studded with iron spikes to which Catherine was bound. However, a thunderbolt from heaven destroyed it before it could harm her. Catherine was then beheaded, and her body was carried by angels to a monastery on Mt. Sinai, which still claims to possess her relics.

Bartsch 342; Hind 154; Biorklund-Barnard 38-A; Usticke 342

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