Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with Saskia (also known as The Prodigal Son in the Tavern), painted around 1635 and now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, is one of the most remarkable acts of self-implication in the history of Western art. The young, successful, newly married artist places himself and his beautiful wife Saskia directly into the biblical narrative of Luke 15:13 - 'he squandered his wealth in wild living' - in a gesture that is simultaneously boastful, playful, and daringly self-aware.
The Biblical Source
Luke 15:11-32, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, is by any measure the most narratively and emotionally rich parable in the Gospels. Jesus tells of a younger son who demands his inheritance early, travels to a distant country, and 'squandered his wealth in wild living' (verse 13). The Greek term translated 'wild living' is asotos - prodigal, recklessly wasteful. After the money is spent and a famine strikes, the son comes to his senses, returns home, and is received by his father with overwhelming mercy: the robe, the ring, the fatted calf, the music and dancing. The parable is the most complete expression in Jesus's teaching of the grace that Luther called the heart of the Gospel.
Rembrandt's Self-Portrait as Confession
In 1635 Rembrandt was at the peak of his early success: he had married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634, was running a thriving studio, and was the most sought-after portraitist in Amsterdam. The painting shows the artist raising a glass of wine toward the viewer with a broad grin, Saskia sitting on his knee, her back to us, her face in three-quarter profile. The scene is that of Luke 15:13: the tavern feast of the prodigal's wasted years. The peacock pie visible on the table was a luxury dish associated with moral excess in Dutch emblem books. The whole composition is an encoded self-condemnation that is also a performance of prosperity.
The Distance Between Two Prodigal Son Paintings
The Dresden self-portrait acquires its deepest meaning only in relation to Rembrandt's late Return of the Prodigal Son (c. 1668, Hermitage), painted after decades of financial ruin, the death of Saskia, the deaths of his son Titus and his companion Hendrickje, and his own bankruptcy proceedings. That late work shows the father's hands cradling the shaved and ragged son - and those hands, tender and differentiated (one masculine, one feminine), are among the most psychologically complex passages in the history of Western painting. The distance between the young man raising his glass in Dresden and the broken figure kneeling in the Hermitage is the distance between pride and penitence, between Luke 15:13 and Luke 15:20.
Theological Significance
The Reformed tradition that shaped Rembrandt's world read the Prodigal Son parable as the clearest possible illustration of the doctrine of grace: the son cannot earn his restoration; it is given before he can complete his prepared speech of contrition (Luke 15:21-22). The father does not impose conditions; he runs (verse 20), which was an undignified act for a man of his standing. The fatted calf and the best robe are not rewards for repentance but expressions of the father's prior, unconditional love - what Paul calls in Ephesians 2:8 grace 'not by works, so that no one can boast.' Rembrandt's two paintings bracket the entire arc of this grace: the boasting, and its dissolution.
The Parable's Three Characters
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is more accurately - and more importantly - the Parable of the Father and Two Sons. The elder son (Luke 15:25-32), who has stayed obediently at home and who refuses to join the celebration of his brother's return, represents a different failure than his brother's: the failure of self-righteousness and resentment, the person who keeps the rules and therefore believes the father owes him more than he is receiving. Jesus leaves the parable famously unfinished: we do not know whether the elder son enters the feast. The question is directed at the Pharisees and teachers of the law to whom Jesus told it (verse 2) - will they, who have 'served faithfully,' recognize that the father's mercy to returning sinners is not an injustice to the faithful but the revelation of the father's character? Rembrandt's Dresden self-portrait inhabits the younger son's self-regarding excess; it invites us to recognize that the elder son's self-regarding resentment is no less dangerous, and no less in need of the same mercy.
Henri Nouwen and the Parable's Continuing Power
The distance between Rembrandt's two Prodigal Son paintings has been most searchingly explored by the Catholic priest and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, whose 1992 book The Return of the Prodigal Son records his sustained meditation before the Hermitage version. Nouwen saw in the father's hands - one large and masculine, one small and feminine - an image of God's embrace that transcended gender and identity, and in the hunched figure of the returned son an image of every human being who has exhausted the resources of self-sufficiency and found themselves, at the end of every alternative, in need of unconditional love. The Dresden self-portrait is the entry into this journey; the Hermitage return is its destination. Rembrandt's lifelong engagement with the parable of Luke 15 - from the boasting young man of 1635 to the shattered penitent of 1668 - is the most personal spiritual autobiography in the history of Western painting.
Visiting
The painting hangs in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany, one of the finest collections of European Old Masters in the world. Dresden's collections are distributed across several buildings in the Zwinger complex. The Alte Meister gallery is currently housed in permanent galleries and is accessible by rail from Berlin (two hours). The Return of the Prodigal Son, the companion to understand this work, is in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.