Rembrandt´s Slaughtered Ox: The Legacy.

Slaughtered Ox  (a.k.a. Carcass of Beef  or Flayed Ox) by  Rembrandt (Louvre).

Another version of the same subject is in  Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, possibly by Rembrandt himself,  but probably by one of his pupils.


Rembrandt did not very often make still life as the primary subject of his pictures. Only a handful of his works can be classified as "nature morte". But among these few, two are paintings of The Slaughtered Ox. The earlier is in the Louvre.It´s usually dated to the late 1630´s. The second version, inscribed with the date 1655,  is in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.The two pictures are very similar in composition and mood. Rembrandt shows the darkened interior of a room in which a slaughtered ox hangs lashed to a cross beam by the hind legs. In the Louvre panel the head and hide of the ox are shown piled on the floor at the lower right. A woman appears in both works. In the Kelvingrove  painting she seems to be mopping the floor (in the lower left corner) , while in the Louvre picture she stands in a door at the foot of a stairway and thoughtfully peers around either towards the carcass or towards the viewer. The literature on Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox is not extensive. For the most part, discussions centre around the loose impressionistic style of the Louvre version or the dating problems of the Glasgow panel. Some time ago, however, J. A. Emmens suggested that the paintings should be considered from an iconographic viewpoint (?). In 1969 Joseph Muller ventured that the hanging carcass of Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox might represent the idea of death (?).

Chaim Soutine's Carcass of Beef was influenced and somewhat inspired by Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox, which is shown below. Rembrandt's painting has been associated with the crucifixion of Christ in the way that the legs of the ox resemble Christ's arms on the cross. Though, Soutine's version of this painting looks less like the story that Rembrandt's painting has been linked to. 

To make this painting, Soutine took a decaying carcass from a butcher in his town, drug it to his apartment where it sat while he painted it. His neighbors didn't like the smell after a few hours or days of sitting in the apartment building and they asked him to remove it from his room. 

Carcass of Beef was also mentioned in the movie Mona Lisa Smile as a class of art history students are asked if it is any good. 

 Lorenzo Delleani. 

With violent reds and whites made of congealed paint, three quartered oxen emerge from deep obscurity hanging on butchers’ hooks. The carcasses of the three animals, arranged on different planes, take up the entire panel and look as though they have been crucified on the beams of the ceiling. This is one of the works in which a transfiguring tendency, which at times appears in Delleani, can be seen in its most powerful form. The choice of subject is also laden with significance, for it makes reference to a painting by Rembrandt, one of Delleani’s best-loved artists, The Slaughtered Ox of 1655 (Paris, Louvre).

Francis Bacon, "Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef," 1954

 The slaughtered ox
Signed and dated 'Jan Victors f . 1647' (lower right)
Oil on Pane. 

 This "thing" has been attributed to Rembrandt, but if you are a painter, a professional painter, i mean, it´s obvious that this painting is not by Rembrandt.