It paid off. In painting his extraordinary religious drama Judas Repentant, Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver (finished in 1629), young Rembrandt scatters across the warm grain of oak ...

Prior to 1629, when the 23-year-old Rembrandt painted “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” the scene, the culmination of the biblical episode long associated with anti-Semitism that ...

Also present in the crowd was painter Rembrandt van Rijn, who lived nearby and enjoyed sketching actors as they performed. A man of means with a taste for the finer things in life, Rembrandt was ...

Seeing an unfamiliar painting by Rembrandt is a life event: fresh data on what it’s like to be human. A remarkable case in point is “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver” (1629), now ...