Faith, hope and clarity - Visual Arts - Scotsman.com Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow IT WAS the first work of art by Rembrandt van Rijn ever to enter a public collection in Britain and its authenticity has never been doubted. It belonged to a great collector, William Hunter, who bought it at Christie's in 1771 from the collection of Orcadian-born engraver Robert Strange. It now sits in a university gallery cared for by art historical experts. And yet, for all this scrutiny, the ­little painting on an oak wood panel that we now know as Rembrandt's Entombment Sketch is mysterious. It is small, dark and enigmatic: by turns delicately rendered and in places ­almost hewn in loose, near sculptural paint. In shades of brown, ochre, black and umber, with only tiny touches of white, it shows the figure of Christ ­after the crucifixion, his prone body being laid to rest in the dark cave that was to be his tomb. Beside him is the gaunt white-haired figure of Joseph of Arimathea; tending his feet is Mary Magdalene. The whole painting is still, as though when Jesus stopped breathing the world itself held its breath. At Christ's shoulder a female figure, possibly the Virgin Mary, shields a single candle in her outstretched hands. The soft glow illuminates the hushed and anxious central group but barely reaches the huddled figures in the gloomy cave beyond. But the light is both physical and ­spiritual. While the human drama is still ­unfolding there are hints at the ­resurrection to come. Rembrandt And The Passion marks the reopening of the Hunterian at the University of Glasgow. In the refurbished upper spaces, where smart new walls conceal the concrete ­bru­- talism of the original interiors, it's an opportunity to cast new light on a work which, although modest in scale, is one of the gallery's treasures. It turns out the picture is a ­historical puzzle that doesn't quite fit: neither, as has been suggested, a sketch for a larger completed work, nor, as was long thought, a preparatory "grisaille" created for a print. It may even have been perplexing to the artist himself. Unlike the works displayed in his home for commercial sales, it hung on the wall of his Amsterdam "living room," a place crammed with pictures, yet so intimate that it's where he and his wife Saskia slept in a curtained bed. It was a picture that - as the new research for this show has established - Rembrandt returned to, possibly more than a decade after he first worked on it in the mid 1630s. It was perhaps, like the most audacious of his etchings also on show, deliberately experimental or unfinished. Rather than a preparatory work it was an independent painting, a problem that Rembrandt hadn't quite resolved. Indeed, as Erma Hermens, of the University of Glasgow, carefully sets out, in a single image we have two historical styles. Through modern eyes it is almost like glimpsing two incarnations of the artist: on the one hand the careful and attentive rising star, setting out to gain commissions and approval in a competitive marketplace; and on the other the confident mature and sometimes chaotic master who took personal and artistic risks and pushed paint around with careless daring. In a bravura set piece of detective work, the exhibition sets out the ­stages by which its custodians tried to unlock the mysteries of the painting. And it tells us something about how they reach out to the past using a combination of strict methodology, intuitive guesswork and, these days, a barrage of scientific tests and techniques. As part of the investigation there are fantastic loans from the Met in New York, the British Museum and London's National Gallery, and a host of related material to help us understand how, and from what sources, a 17th-century painter might set out to tell a biblical tale. But equally fascinating for some visitors will be the revelation that the technique known as dendrochronology can not only tell us where the wooden panel that Rembrandt used was sourced from, but in which decade the original tree was felled. The show brings together 40 works, some that Rembrandt himself made on the theme of the Passion and related ­religious subjects at various stages of his career. Then there are those by other artists that he kept close: either literally in his own domestic museum or Kunst Caemer, or metaphorically through emulation and imitation. On loan from London's Courtauld is an oil sketch of Rubens" showy ­Descent From The Cross, which ­Rembrandt knew of and emulated. And from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich there is another haunting Rembrandt treatment of the Entombment, completed as part of a series on the Passion for the Stadholder Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange. The comparison is fruitful: the Munich Entombment is lit from multiple sources. From the twilit sky, over distant ­Calvary, the eye moves down and through this painting, from top to bottom and left to right as Christ's body similarly moved down from the cross and was lowered into his tomb. It's like a retrospective glance, the terrible events of the ­crucifixion setting the scene in motion. In the Hunterian's Entombment sketch you can't see Calvary. You are held in the present tense, in the terrible spell of that dark cave. And yet, in the light from the single candle, hope springs. The comparison might be with Rembrandt's treatment of the Raising Of Lazarus. For here is a lifeless body about to be reanimated. Indeed the same might be said for the thorough and rewarding intensity of this highly focused show: a single small dark painting brought suddenly and startlingly to life.  Until 2 December. www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian