Le Mas d’Agenais is a picturesque village overlooking the Garonne River, approximately halfway between the cities of Toulouse and Bordeaux. Its small parish church, Église Saint Vincent, is the unlikely home of a painting produced in 1631 by Rembrandt.
Measuring 100 by 73 centimeters (about 39 by 29 inches), the oil-on-panel artwork depicts a tormented Christ on the cross set against a dark landscape. Stylistically, the work is similar to the Passion series of paintings produced around the same time for Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange.
The identity of the Mas d’Agenais painting's commissioner is unknown, but its earliest known owner was Catharina Elisabeth Bode, who lived in the Dutch city of Delft. The work is believed to have been listed at an auction in Bruges, Belgium, in 1781. Shortly afterwards, it was purchased in northern France by the French military captain Xavier Duffour. In 1805, Duffour donated it to the parish of his hometown, Le Mas d’Agenais. Somewhere along the line, the identity of the painter was lost.
The painting was out of sight for nearly 50 years until it was rediscovered and examined by the French Imperial Museums, who restored it for the first time in 1853. The work was tentatively identified as possibly being by Rembrandt.
In the early years of the 20th century, it was listed as a national heritage painting. Then, during a restoration in 1959, radiography revealed the artist’s signature beneath the subject’s feet. Authentication was complete.
Since that time, the painting has left the village on two occasions. The first was in 2011, when it featured in a Rembrandt exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris. While there, it was studied and further restored at the workshops of France’s National Center for Research and Restoration. Then, from 2016, the painting was stored in Bordeaux while a new, high-security, climate-controlled display case was installed in the tiny village church.
Rembrandt’s Christ on the Cross returned to Le Mas d’Agenais in 2022, where it can now be viewed by visitors every day during Saint Vincent church’s opening hours.
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