The Return of the Prodigal Son

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669)
The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1668–1669
Oil on canvas, 262 × 205 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669)
The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1668–1669
Oil on canvas, 262 × 205 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

I looked at Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son within the framework of Saturdays with Diana, which centers on the following question: Am I Worthy of Love, Even Without Him?

Saturdays with Diana is the mini-magazine I publish every Saturday morning. Each issue centers on a question or theme that I explore through articles I have previously published on my blog, articles published elsewhere, and various forms of art and culture.

To explore the question Am I Worthy of Love, Even Without Him?, I chose, among other things, Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. Here I want to explain why this particular painting was chosen in this context. To do that, I need to tell you a little about the painting itself and what it depicts. I’m not going to go into too much detail, partly because I’m not an art expert and partly because it concerns a parable from the Bible, and I know even less about that.

But why am I going to talk here about things I know nothing about? Because I consider this a necessary introduction to my own interpretation of the painting. And that is what I really want to talk about. Actually, I’m not sure whether interpretation is the right word here. Perhaps, as a layperson, I would rather put it a little more modestly and speak of my experience of the painting. And in that context, I’d also like to invite you to tell me how you see this painting and perhaps what you make of my thoughts about it.

What is Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son about?

Here Rembrandt depicts a scene from the Parable of the Prodigal Son, told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (15:11–32). The younger of two sons asks his father for his share of the inheritance in advance, something that in those biblical times was considered—at the very least—disrespectful. In effect, the son was treating his father as though he were already dead. Yet the father agrees and divides his property between his sons.

The younger son leaves for a distant country, where he squanders his entire inheritance. When his money runs out, a severe famine strikes the country as well. He gets into such dire circumstances that he has to take a job feeding pigs. For Jesus’ original Jewish audience, this would have been an especially humiliating image: pigs were considered unclean animals by Jews. The prodigal son becomes so hungry that he even longs for the pigs’ food. Then he says to himself:

“How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough to spare, and I’m dying with hunger!”

He decides to go home. But he doesn’t expect to be welcomed back as a son. He already has his speech prepared: he will tell his father that he has sinned and is no longer worthy to be called his son, and ask to be treated as one of his hired servants.

Then something unexpected happens. His father sees him while he is still a long way off and runs to meet him, embraces him, and kisses him. He restores his dignity: a fine robe, a ring, and sandals, and he orders a feast to be prepared.

But there is also the older son, who has remained faithfully at his father’s side all this time and thinks it is unfair that his brother—who has been so disrespectful, abandoned his father, and even squandered his entire inheritance—is welcomed home with such a celebration.

In my own words, the older son’s complaint to his father is basically: “But you never celebrated me like that, even though I’ve been here supporting you all this time!”

And the father replies:

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But it was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for this, your brother, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.”

Before I tell you what I see as the connection between the central question of Saturdays with Diana—Am I Worthy of Love, Even Without Him?—and Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, and before I tell you about my personal experience of this painting, I’d like to point you to a video by Ryan M. Reeves, in which he explains the painting and the parable in greater detail and places them in the context of Rembrandt’s own life. Highly recommended!

The video referenced above

Ryan M. Reeves on Rembrandt and the parable of the prodigal son

Am I Worthy of Love, Even Without Him?

So what is the connection between Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son and our central question?

When the younger son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son realizes how far he has fallen, he says to himself:

“I will get up and go to my father.”

He plans to say to his father when they meet again:

“I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.”

He does this with the thought: I can’t go back as a son anymore. But perhaps my father will let me work for him. At least then I can earn my keep and have a roof over my head, and I won’t be completely lost.

But what happens contradicts his expectations. Luke tells us that the father sees him while he is still a long way off, runs to him, embraces him, and kisses him. Only then does the son begin his prepared confession. And even then, he says only:

“Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

The next sentence—“Make me as one of your hired servants”—never actually comes out of his mouth in the story. It is as though the father interrupts him by immediately restoring his dignity as a son: the best robe, a ring, sandals, a feast.

So the underlying question here is: Do I have to have done something, be someone, or be chosen by someone in order to be worthy of love?

In Rembrandt’s painting, that question is almost literally embodied. The son thinks he has forfeited his place as a beloved son. But the father never even entertains that thought: his love for his child is not dependent on the child’s performance, mistakes, or merit. The son returns in shame and humiliation; the father takes the initiative and embraces him. The father doesn’t wait for his son to feel worthy again.

And then there is the older son, who feels overlooked because he doesn’t get a celebration, even though he has worked faithfully all those years. While the younger son is convinced that he is not good enough to be loved, the older son is convinced that he is good enough and therefore entitled to love.

And the father seems to be saying to both of them: You don’t have to earn my love.

So you could say that Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son is about the unconditional love of a parent for their child. That love is simply there, independent of merit.

“You don’t have to earn my love.”

Diana’s interpretation of The Return of the Prodigal Son

And this brings us to the thoughts the painting evokes in me. Because the first question that comes to my mind after this tentative conclusion is: Is love still there if it isn’t independent of merit, if it isn’t unconditional? Here I am thinking primarily about the love of a parent for their child.

What touches me most about this painting is the generous embrace the father gives his son. For me, that embrace already contains the unconditional nature of his love for his son. You can almost feel that unconditionality when you imagine yourself being embraced in such a way.

That is what I did after watching a scene in The Godfather Part III: Michael Corleone embraces his daughter Mary in a similarly generous way when she expresses her desire for them to become closer. And that is why the embrace in Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son makes me think of that scene from The Godfather.

I tried to imagine what such an embrace would feel like because, while watching that scene in The Godfather, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what it feels like to be loved by your father.

“I had no idea what it feels like to be loved by your father.”

I can relate both to the shame of the younger, lost son and to the older son’s feeling of being overlooked. To me, the two brothers represent two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, I have sometimes tried so hard to win love, whether from my father or from certain men in my life. And on the other hand, that is precisely what I am ashamed of. Because when you have very little dignity, when you go through life believing that you are unlovable, that you have to earn love because you are not worthy of it, you are sometimes willing to pay for it with whatever little dignity you have left.

Anyway, I don’t need to explain that to you. I’m sure you understand what I mean.

It’s a vicious circle that I have tried to break—like the prodigal son—by protecting myself from even more shame and resigning myself to my fate of being unlovable, only to end up feeling overlooked again, like the older son.

I can imagine that last sentence may be a little bit much information all at once, and that you may need a moment to let everything you’ve just read sink in. 😉

Let’s go back for a moment to the father’s reaction when he runs joyfully toward his son and welcomes him with open arms after that son has, in effect, abandoned him and blown through his life savings in a hedonistic way. The father’s reaction is often described in this context as forgiveness. I experience it more as compassion. And perhaps there is even a hidden message in this biblical story: that compassion is a good antidote to shame. As I said above, “the father restores the son’s dignity” through the robe, the sandals, and so on. You could interpret this symbolically as follows: through compassion—whether self-compassion or compassion from others—you can restore your dignity. There are clinical psychologists who consider self-compassion an important antidote to shame for precisely this reason.

Art historians have offered an interpretation of the supposed difference between the father’s two hands: the hand on our right, they argue, looks more masculine than the hand we see on the left. According to this interpretation, Rembrandt intended to express different kinds of love through the two hands: a more maternal kind of love through the softer-looking hand on the left, and a more paternal kind of love through the more masculine-looking hand on the right.

But to me, those hands simply look different because they are both positioned in a different perspective relative to us. Another reason I don’t think one hand represents maternal love and the other paternal love is that I believe Rembrandt may actually have depicted the mother—even though she doesn’t appear in the parable itself. If you look very carefully, all the way up in the upper-left corner, in the darkness, you can see a barely visible figure. Some art historians identify this figure as the mother. Ryan M. Reeves, however, identifies a different figure as the mother: the blond figure to the right of the father. To be honest, I’m not sure I find that interpretation convincing. That figure looks clearly male to me.

And if the figure in the upper-left corner is indeed the mother, that means Rembrandt did depict the mother after all—and that undermines the idea that the father’s softer hand should represent maternal love because the mother herself is absent from the painting.

As for the other figures: the figure on the far right in the red cloak is generally identified as the older son. I couldn’t find any information about the other two—the mustached man and the blond young man.

Over to you

What does Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son do to you?

Can you relate to the thoughts I have about it?

Do you see something completely different in it?

I’m genuinely very curious!