# Christ Preaching, Healing the Sick, and Blessing the Children ("The Hundred Guilder Print") > Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn - c. 1647-1649 (most institutional catalogues and the New Hollstein Rembrandt catalogue favor c. 1648; watermark analysis indicates surviving lifetime impressions were printed from around 1647-48, though some older literature extends the print's gestation earlier into the 1640s without documentary support this record could verify) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/rembrandt-van-rijn/rembrandt-hundred-guilder-print/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-16 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn - **Date:** c. 1647-1649 (most institutional catalogues and the New Hollstein Rembrandt catalogue favor c. 1648; watermark analysis indicates surviving lifetime impressions were printed from around 1647-48, though some older literature extends the print's gestation earlier into the 1640s without documentary support this record could verify) - **Medium:** Etching, drypoint and engraving (burin) on paper; lifetime and early impressions typically on Japanese paper, later and posthumous impressions on European laid paper - **Dimensions:** Platemark approximately 278-283 x 387-395 mm, varying slightly across published measurements of different impressions; full sheets are commonly larger, trimmed sheets smaller (a comparison of five directly examined impressions in this record ranges from 250 x 283 mm, trimmed and mounted, to 282 x 395 mm on the full plate) - **Object type:** Print - **Period:** Dutch, seventeenth century (Golden Age) - **Current location:** National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Rembrandt's largest and most technically ambitious etching, combining three episodes from Matthew 19 - Christ blessing the children, healing the sick, and debating the Pharisees on divorce - into a single scene built from the deepest blacks and the most delicate, unworked whites he ever set side by side on one plate. He did not sign or date it. Its popular name comes from a price of 100 guilders reported for it within his own lifetime, but the more colorful version of that story, that Rembrandt himself paid the sum to buy back his own print, has no primary source that this record's research could locate; Rembrandt scholar Seymour Slive said plainly that he had been unable to find who paid it, and this record treats the buy-back tale as unverified legend rather than settled fact.The plate survived Rembrandt by more than a century, wearing down under repeated printing, before it passed to the London collector and amateur engraver Captain William Baillie in 1775. Baillie reworked it by his own hand, pulled about a hundred impressions from the reworked whole, then cut the copper into four pieces, reworked each fragment again, and printed the pieces separately, permanently ending the plate's existence as a single image. Impressions therefore fall into distinct, physically different classes: a very rare first state (perhaps nine impressions survive, two of them in the British Museum), a common lifetime and early-posthumous second state, and later Baillie-state and cut-fragment impressions that carry an eighteenth-century hand alongside Rembrandt's. This record centers on the National Gallery of Art's impression, from the Rosenwald Collection, and treats one richly documented English impression, now at the Morgan Library, as a separate, individually sourced chain rather than folding the two together. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1647-1649** Rembrandt van Rijn, Amsterdam (the copper plate and its lifetime impressions) `[documented]` (creation) No monogram or date is etched into the plate; the date range is a scholarly reconstruction from style, technique and, for surviving lifetime paper stocks, watermark evidence, not an inscription on the object. A market price near or above 100 guilders for an impression is independently attested within Rembrandt's own lifetime by a dated letter of 1654, though no specific transaction or buyer is named in that or any other source consulted. - **undated** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No owner of the copper plate is documented for the century between Rembrandt's death in 1669 and the plate's appearance, already worn from repeated printing, in the hands of the painter and engraver John Greenwood by 1775. Separately and without any documented link established in the sources consulted, this record's own impression's individual ownership history before 1943 is likewise not established. - **-1943** Lessing J. Rosenwald (1891-1979) `[unknown]` (acquisition) This impression carries the Rosenwald Collection credit line and National Gallery of Art accession 1943.3.7173. The date, source and price of Rosenwald's own acquisition of this specific sheet were not established by the sources this record could access; the Gallery's own object page returned a server error on every attempt made during research. - **1943-present** National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. `[documented]` (gift) Part of Rosenwald's 1943 pledge of the core of his print and drawing collection to the National Gallery, the same gift that brought the Gallery's Durer Melencolia I impression recorded elsewhere in this archive; this sheet carries accession 1943.3.7173. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **2024-11-26** Bonhams, - Estimate: Not stated in the source consulted - Hammer: USD 18,000 - With premium: USD 5,040 (28 percent buyer's premium on amounts under USD 50,000) - New York sale 29523, lot 2. A Baillie-period impression, New Hollstein's third state of four (of the reworked, not-yet-cut plate), on laid paper carrying the Hinterding miscellaneous F.a. watermark; ex the collection of Mr and Mrs John Estabrook, Chicago. This is a posthumously reworked impression, not a lifetime Rembrandt pull, and its price reflects that specific, later class of the object rather than the rarer first or second states of Rembrandt's own plate. ## Open questions - Who, if anyone, actually paid 100 guilders for an impression of this print, and to whom? The only contemporary document found, the 1654 Meyssens letter, reports a market price but names no specific transaction or buyer; Seymour Slive stated he could not establish who paid it, and this record could not improve on that. - Did Rembrandt himself ever buy back an impression of his own print, as the popular version of the story claims? No primary source for this specific claim was located; it appears to trace to an eighteenth or nineteenth-century secondhand account (via Mariette, per Christopher White) that is itself unverified and inconsistent with Gersaint's 1751 alternative version involving Marcantonio Raimondi engravings. - What is the state, and the pre-1943 provenance, of the National Gallery of Art's own impression at the center of this record (accession 1943.3.7173)? The Gallery's object page returned a server error on every attempt made during this research pass, and no state or ownership history prior to Rosenwald's 1943 gift could be independently confirmed. - Did an impression of this specific print pass through Christiaan Josi's hands, either in the Ploos van Amstel collection he catalogued in 1810 or in his own 1829 posthumous sale? No source consulted names this print specifically within either collection, though both collections are documented to have included Rembrandt etchings in bulk. - Who were the owners of Rembrandt's copper plate between his death in 1669 and its appearance, already worn, in the hands of the painter John Greenwood by 1775? No source consulted names an intervening owner across that century-long gap. - What did the Sotheby's Old Master Prints sale of late 2025 (lot 520) realize for its impression of this print? The lot was identified in the sale catalogue during this research pass, but the sale's estimate and result were not available in the source consulted. - Which state, precisely, is the Rijksmuseum's maculature sheet RP-P-OB-603, and what does its heavy hand-reworking in pen and brush represent in Rembrandt's own working process? The Rijksmuseum's own cataloguing describes it as a working document rather than a finished state, but this record could not establish more than that from the source consulted. - Who does the unidentified collector's mark, Lugt 240, on the Rijksmuseum's impression RP-P-OB-602 belong to? This record could not confirm the mark's identity from the sources consulted, despite searching the standard Lugt reference specifically for it. ## Sources - [1] National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession 1943.3.7173, 'Christ Preaching (The Hundred Guilder Print),' Rosenwald Collection (identified via the object's Wikimedia Commons file description and corroborating search-indexed National Gallery of Art catalogue text; the Gallery's own object page returned a server error on every direct access attempt during this research pass). - [2] Wikimedia Commons, File:Rembrandt van Rijn - Christ Preaching (The Hundred Guilder Print) - Google Art Project.jpg, file description confirming National Gallery of Art accession 1943.3.7173 and CC0/Public Domain Mark 1.0 status. - [3] Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object page for 'Christ Healing the Sick (Hundred Guilder Print),' accession RP-P-OB-601. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Hundred Guilder Print.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with White and Boon's catalogue raisonne and the New Hollstein Rembrandt catalogue directly. - [5] Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, Amy Golahny, 'Early Reception of Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print: Jan Steen's Emulation.' - [6] The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, collection object page for 'The Hundred Guilder Print,' RvR 115. - [7] Cleveland Museum of Art, object page for 'The Hundred Guilder Print,' accession 1942.757. - [8] Cleveland Museum of Art, object page for 'The Hundred Guilder Print, central section,' accession 1942.116. - [9] Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object page for 'Christ Healing the Sick (Hundred Guilder Print),' accession RP-P-1962-1. - [10] Search-indexed summary of scholarly consensus (National Gallery of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Denver Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum catalogue language) confirming the print is unsigned and undated in the plate. Flagged as a secondary aggregation pending direct confirmation from a single institutional catalogue entry. - [11] British Museum, London, collection object page, registration P_F-4-154, describing a first-state impression ('before the additional shading with diagonal lines on the neck of the donkey'). - [12] Arthur Mayger Hind, Rembrandt, With a Complete List of His Etchings, entry for 'Christ, with the Sick around Him, receiving Little Children (the Hundred Guilder Print), B. 74,' noting the first state and its rarity (nine impressions known, two in the British Museum). Public domain text via Project Gutenberg. - [13] National Galleries of Scotland, catalogue entry citing New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish 239, state ii or iii of iv (Hinterding and Rutgers, The New Hollstein: Rembrandt, 2013). - [14] Bonhams, New York, sale 29523, lot 2, 26 November 2024, 'Christ healing the Sick: The Hundred Guilder Print,' catalogued as New Hollstein's third state of four, with watermark, provenance and price realized. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Rembrandt.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography (e.g. Gary Schwartz or Christopher White's monographs on the artist). - [16] Search-indexed scholarly translation and discussion of Rembrandt's 12 January 1639 letter to Constantijn Huygens, quoting 'the greatest and the most natural movement.' - [17] Constantijn Huygens biographical and documentary context for the correspondence with Rembrandt. - [18] Wikipedia, 'Hundred Guilder Print,' quoting the 9 February 1654 letter of Jan Meyssens to Carel van den Bosch, bishop of Bruges: 'in Holland [it] has been sold various times for 100 guilders and more,' 'very fine and lovely, but ought to cost 30 guilders.' - [19] The Magazine Antiques, 'Object Lesson: The Revisionist Prints of William Baillie,' on Baillie's 1775 acquisition of the plate from John Greenwood, his reworking, edition, and cutting of the plate into four pieces. - [20] Wikipedia, 'William Baillie (engineer).' Tertiary source on Baillie's biography, flagged for replacement with a specialist print-history monograph. - [21] Bonhams, New York, sale 29523, lot 2, price realized data (hammer USD 18,000, 28 percent buyer's premium, total USD 23,040). - [22] Wikisource, Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, 'Josi, Christian,' for Josi's biography, training, his inheritance of and 1810 catalogue of Cornelis Ploos van Amstel's Rembrandt etchings, the sale of that collection to the Earl of Aylesford, his move to London in 1819, and his death and 1829 posthumous sale. - [23] Wikipedia, 'Christiaan Josi.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Rijksmuseum Bulletin article on Josi and Cornelis Apostool (bibliographic reference located but not directly accessible during this research pass) and with a specialist study of the Ploos van Amstel collection. - [24] livingthebiblios (blog), 'The Mystery of Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print,' summarizing and quoting Christopher White's and Seymour Slive's scholarship on the Mariette anecdote and Von Uffenbach's 1711 diary reference. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Slive's Rembrandt and His Critics, 1630-1730 and White's Rembrandt as an Etcher directly. - [25] Search-indexed summary of Edme-Francois Gersaint's 1751 Catalogue raisonne de toutes les pieces qui forment l'oeuvre de Rembrandt and its account of the print's name via a supposed exchange for Marcantonio Raimondi engravings. Flagged for replacement with Gersaint's catalogue text directly (digitized copies exist via the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive). - [26] The Essential Vermeer, 'Historical Value of the Guilder: Measuring Vermeer's Prices,' for seventeenth-century Dutch wage and price comparisons used to contextualize the 100-guilder sum. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.