Intimately connected with this is the example of Rembrandt’s technical use of chiaroscuro, used either for the purpose of interpreting sentiment or of simply adding to the interest of the color-scheme. The foretaste of this is given in a series of six pictures of Biblical subjects in the Pinakothek, painted for the Stadtholder, Frederick Henry: two of them, _The Descent from the Cross_ and _The Elevation of the Cross_, in 1633; _The Ascension_, 1636; _The Burial_ and _The Resurrection_, 1639; and _The Adoration of the Shepherds_, 1646. About three feet high, they approximate to the familiar size of genre, and are distinctly genre in conception and treatment. Moreover, they are arched over at the top, a device that became popular with Dou and other genre painters, who frequently substituted for the formal arch a draped curtain, the result being to set the main part of the scene back, and thus increase the effect of looking into it. This, however, is not merely to suggest more vividly the third dimension. For Rembrandt in these pictures has set the example of concentrating the high light on a few features of the composition, surrounding these with lighted objects of lower value, and finally inclosing all in a ring of shadow, so that one seems to be looking into a circular concavity out of the gloom of which certain objects emerge into view with greater or less distinctness. The device is used by Rembrandt to heighten the dramatic and emotional significance of the composition, and was so applied by some of his followers, notably by Maes, while by others the principle was adopted as a means of giving force, variety, and added charm of mystery to their color-schemes. It became, in fact, one of the most characteristic of the technical methods of Holland genre. Apropos of this series it is interesting to note, as a side-light on Rembrandt’s use of models, that one, _The Elevation of the Cross_, contains a striking figure of an Oriental. It was transferred in reduced size from a picture of the same subject painted in the preceding year, 1632, which is now owned by the New York collector Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt. Moreover, the head and bust of this man appear as the subject of another picture, painted in the same year as _The Elevation_, which now hangs in the Munich Pinakothek.