Simeon in the Temple

Simeon in the Temple from 1669 in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm is widely considered Rembrandt's last painting, left unfinished at his death in October of that year at the age of sixty-three. The subject — the aged prophet Simeon holding the infant Jesus in the Temple and recognizing him as the Messiah, speaking the Nunc Dimittis ('Lord, now let your servant depart in peace') — carried overwhelming personal resonance for a dying artist who had outlived his wife, his companion, and his son. The painting's unfinished state, particularly in the lower passages where the figures of Mary and Joseph are barely sketched in, has become part of its emotional significance: the incompleteness reveals Rembrandt's working process and adds to the quality of vision-in-progress that makes the work so moving. The Nationalmuseum acquired the painting in the nineteenth century as part of the Swedish national collection's systematic acquisition of Dutch and Flemish masterworks, and it has been exhibited at the Nationalmuseum as the terminus of Rembrandt's career — the last vision of a life devoted to painting.

The unfinished canvas reveals the rough underpainting and the process by which Rembrandt built up his late compositions. Simeon's face is the most fully realized passage, modeled with tender precision, while the surrounding figures remain at various stages of completion.