The Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam has found an unusually permanent way to bring the old master's work to life: a volunteer is having Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross tattooed across his entire back. Two Dutch tattoo studios are sharing the work, which is expected to take around 20 hours.

The image is Rembrandt's 1633 etching of Christ being lowered from the cross, attended by two friends or helpers. In the museum's version, the scene will stretch across the back of a 28-year-old volunteer, turning a print made nearly four centuries ago into a living, breathing artwork.

The spectacle is part of a temporary tattoo studio set up inside the museum, where other visitors can have smaller Rembrandt motifs inked for between 100 and 300 euros. The museum occupies the Amsterdam house where Rembrandt once lived and worked, and the studio invites visitors to carry his imagery with them in the most literal way possible.

The stunt underlines how far museums will now go to make old masters feel immediate: not a reproduction on a wall, but an image carried on skin. For the volunteer, the reward is a masterpiece he will carry for life; for the museum, a headline that travels well beyond Amsterdam.

The etching dates from 1633, when Rembrandt was 27 and still building his reputation in Amsterdam. The Descent from the Cross was one of the prints that carried his name across Europe, and the museum now occupies the house on Jodenbreestraat where he lived and worked from 1639 into the late 1650s.