Hundred Guilder Print

The Hundred Guilder Print is an etching with drypoint by Rembrandt, measuring 278 x 388 mm (platemark). The etching's popular name derives from the large sum of money supposedly charged for it. It is also called Christ healing the sick, Christ with the Sick around Him, Receiving Little Children, or Christ preaching, since the print depicts multiple events from Matthew 19 in the New Testament, including Christ healing the sick, debating with scholars and calling on children to come to him. The rich young man mentioned in the chapter is leaving through the gateway on the right.

Unusually, especially for such an ambitious work, Rembrandt did not sign it, and some parts of it seem "somewhat unresolved". The complexity of different techniques and "variety of styles" in the Hundred Guilder Print have suggested to some art historians that Rembrandt worked on it over a long period in the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge. But a study of the watermarks suggests that the surviving impressions from Rembrandt's lifetime were only pulled "from around 1647-48".

Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen, and several drawings survive for elements of it. The differences between the two states are small, but different papers and inking can create a wide range of different effects between individual impressions (copies).

Wieseman describes the etching as a "technical tour de force, incorporating an enormous diversity of printmaking styles and techniques": the group of figures at the left side of the print, for example, is deftly indicated with a minimum of lightly bitten lines; in contrast, the evocative richness of the blacks and the depth of tone in the right half of the print represents Rembrandt's experimental competition with the newly discovered mezzotint technique.