Christ crucified between the two thieves "The three crosses"

Catalogue number: Bartsch 78.

Rembrandt's romance with drypoint in the 1650s and 1660s is one of the important milestones in the history of printmaking. His inventiveness in this medium led to the creation of compositions that offered more complex visual information and variety of drama than previously had been imagined, and whereas earlier intaglio prints had been translucent and in general rather bodiless, Rembrandt's had a structure and richness of surface that approximate many of his great oil paintings. Moreover, they are illumined by an expressive power that never fails to pierce to the heart of things, whether the subject be, as it is here, a momentous scene from Scripture or the simplest study of still-life.

Rembrandt's Three Crosses of 1653 is one of the pinnacles of printmaking. It is more like a painting than an etching. Curious as to the different effects, Rembrandt made impressions on various kind of papers, and on vellum, which absorbs hardly any ink at all.