Rembrandt Returns

This morning Rembrandt returned to take his place with the other famous artists in the Statuary Vista Garden at work. He was knocked off his pedestal and damaged during Hurricane Irene and had been resting at the Chrysler Museum since.

All of the statues in this garden were carved by Moses Ezekiel in the late 1800's. He was born into poverty, one of 14 children, but despite this, was able to attend the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) on a state scholarship. Ezekiel was the first Jewish cadet admitted to VMI just as the Civil War began, during which he was wounded and received high honors. After the battle of Newmarket, Ezekiel found his good friend Thomas Garland Jefferson, a great nephew of Thomas Jefferson, mortally wounded. The barefoot Ezekiel found a wagon and took his friend into town where he nursed Jefferson and read the New Testament to him until Jefferson's death two days later. After the war Ezekiel completed his education at VMI and was encouraged to pursue his artistic talents in Europe, where he became an accomplished sculpture. Ezekiel carved statues of famous artists to be housed in exterior niches of the original Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C. (now the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery). In the early 1960's all of them moved to the Norfolk Botanical Garden where they are currently undergoing a major renovation, in situ, including the well rested Rembrandt.