The _Christ at Emmaus_ is a small picture, and small the figures appear in
that vast, dimly lighted chamber where the three are seated at table. The
spiritual significance of Christ is suggested by most simple means. Light,
and intensity of emotion, are the only aids. Rembrandt disdains all other
effects. Intense feeling pervades the picture, even in the bare feet of
Christ, even in the astonished hand of the disciple resting upon the chair;
even in the back of the other disciple who gazes, with clasped hands,
transfixed with amazement and love at the face of his Master, who has just
broken bread and thus revealed Himself.

[Illustration: RECONCILIATION BETWEEN DAVID AND ABSALOM

1642. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]

Of all Rembrandt's pictures, this was the one that made the profoundest
impression upon the child when he had become a man. Other works, such as
_The Shipbuilder and his Wife_ at Buckingham Palace, _The Syndics of the
Drapers_ at Amsterdam, that ripe expression of Rembrandt's ripest powers,
convinced him of the master's genius. He was deeply impressed by the range
of portraits and subject-pictures at the Hermitage Gallery, many of which,
by the art of Mr. Mortimer Menpes, have been brought to the fireside of the
untravelled; but the _Christ at Emmaus_ revealed to him the heart of
Rembrandt, and showed him, once and for all, to what heights a painter may
attain when intense feeling is allied with superb craftsmanship.

He found this intensity of emotion again in the _Portrait of his Mother_ at
Vienna. The light falls upon her battered, wrinkled face, the lips are
parted as in extreme age, the hands, so magnificently painted, are folded
upon her stick. When we look at Rembrandt's portrait of _An Old Woman_ at