“This is the head of a baby who just came out of his mother’s womb. Look, it is still wet, and the face is still fetus-like.” All of us who were present saw suddenly what she saw. Was Rembrandt portraying not simply the return to the Father, but also the return to the womb of God who is Mother as well as Father? Until then I had thought of the shaved head of the boy as the head of someone who had been a prisoner, or lived in a concentration camp. I had thought of his face as the emaciated face of an ill-treated hostage.
