Pashur Smiting Jeremiah in the Temple, Leonaert Bramer, c. 1648 – (Leonaert Bramer) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Leonaert Bramer

Date: 1648

Size: 47 x 63 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

As a history painter Bramer had a preference for obscure subjects. This painting probably shows an episode from the life of Jeremiah (20:2), of which no other depictions are known.3 God ordered Jeremiah to go with some elders and priests to the valley of the son of Hinnom. There he was to break an earthenware bottle and tell them that God would break Jerusalem in the same way, because the site of Tophet was tarnished by the many offerings made to other gods. Upon his return Jeremiah entered the Temple and told the people of Jerusalem that the city would be destroyed. Pashur, the son of Immer, the priest of the Temple, beat and imprisoned him. Bramer depicted Immer turned away from the table at which he is seated, feasting with other priests. The immense statue of Zeus above them might be a reference to the fact that the biblical story relates that they are worshipping ‘other’, that is heathen, gods. He points at Jeremiah, who has fallen to the ground while being beaten by Pashur. Crowds of onlookers can barely be discerned in the background. In this reading of the subject the pieces of the bottle in the left foreground are an essential clue, referring to the previous chapter of the story.4 Although this interpretation is the most plausible, there should be some reservations. The large barrels on the extreme left leave open the possibility that the fragments on the ground have no particular meaning apart from being those of the container for transporting wine from the barrels to the table that would have fallen during the scuffle. Bramer often painted on slate while in Italy – a material whose nature made it an ideal support for his small night pieces. Like his northern Italian contemporaries, Veronese chief among them, Bramer painted his scenes on the smooth, bare, dark stone, giving the figures a distinctive impasto.5 It seems that he stopped using slate after his return to Delft in 1628, probably because it was not used as a support for paintings by artists in the Dutch Republic. Using predominantly panel or copper, he recreated the smooth surface and colour of slate by applying a covering of thin, dark grey paint. This made it possible to achieve great detail in the background, as is the case in the present painting, in which the architecture of the Temple and crowds of people can just be discerned in the dark grey backdrop. In contrast to the smooth background, the foreground figures and details are painted with considerable impasto. Except for the likelihood that Bramer only worked on slate in his Italian period, and that his subject matter becomes more and more unusual by the end of the 1630s, his paintings are difficult to date, as his style did not evolve much during his career. Wichmann dated this picture to the end of the 1630s, probably on stylistic grounds.6 However, dendrochronology suggests that a date from 1648 onwards is more likely. Indeed, the composition with relatively small figures in a dimly lit temple with columns, and in particular the small figures on balustrades in the background, are clearly similar to Bramer’s last signed and dated picture of Christ amongst the Doctors of 1647.7 Taco Dibbits, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 30.