REMBRANDT HARMENSZ. VAN RIJN (1606-1669)

Rembrandt depicted this subject on three different occasions and in the present example altered the traditional compositional structure, as regularly seen in Renaissance representations of the event, with Christ placed on a raised platform instructing the elders, as a manifestation of the New Law overcoming the Old. Rembrandt's decision to move away from this iconography may have been influenced by Calvin's understanding of the Gospel of Luke, emphazing the elders' acknowledgement of the child's divinity and their invitation to sit among them. For the reformer, the miracle related to the fact that the doctors treated Jesus as an equal. This sense of equality and Christ's divine humility is reflected by Rembrandt's compositional choice.
(See M. Rosenberg, Rembrandt's Religious Prints, Bloomington, 2017, n. 39, p. 226-228.)