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The Centurion Cornelius (The Unmerciful Servant)
  • Follower of Rembrandt (1606 - 1669)
  • The Centurion Cornelius (The Unmerciful Servant)
  • Netherlands
  • Date: c. 1660
  • Object Type: Painting
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Image size: 176.5 x 216.2 cm
  • Object size: 219.5 x 262 x 11 cm
  • Inv: P86
  • Location: East Galleries I
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Description
Provenance
Further Reading
  • In the nineteenth century, this monumental painting was believed to be the work of Rembrandt, and was by far the most expensive of Lord Hertford’s collection of paintings attributed to the artist. In 1935, it was reattributed to a pupil or follower of Rembrandt, and the exact identity of the author remains disputed to this day.

    The subject matter also remains the object of debate. It has sometimes been identified as the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, taken from the New Testament, in which a king forgives a servant’s debts, only to find that the servant refuses such leniency to a fellow servant. An alternative reading is the story of the Centurion Cornelius, also from the New Testament. Cornelius had a vision of an angel who instructed him to send men to fetch the apostle Peter from Joppa. Cornelius is depicted as the lord of his household rather than as a military commander, did as the angel told him. Following the angel's instruction, he summoned ‘two of his household servants, and a devout soldier of them that waited upon him continually’, a description which corresponds with the appearance of the men who stand in attentive poses on the right.