On June 10, 2024, Rachel Eisendrath, associate professor of English and director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, published a new article in The Yale Review titled “Rembrandt’s Reclining Female Nude: What the print reveals about a body at rest.” In her essay, Eisendrath thoughtfully analyzes Dutch painter Rembrandt’s 1658 etching of a nude female model lying down, facing the wall. She describes the work as an honest depiction of “human creatureliness” and delves into the story told by this female body in need of rest.
The picture is dark and shadowed, and Eisendrath emphasizes the importance of letting one’s eyes “adjust to the darkness” to appreciate the piece’s depth. The woman being turned away from painter and viewer, Eisendrath argues, makes the image particularly powerful: “Her relationship,” she writes, “is with herself.”
Eisendrath’s essay is part of The Yale Review series “A Closer Look,” for which writers annotate a piece of art or an archival object. This is her second contribution to The Yale Review, following a 2023 essay titled “New York Anabasis: In praise of the return to the surface.”