family, and possessed of some fortune. Her features may be recognised in a large number of the painter's pictures; in none more attractively rendered than in the famous picture of the Dresden Gallery, in which she is sitting on her husband's knee. During this period of Rembrandt's life all went well with him. Commissions poured in; his studio was crowded with scholars, and his etchings spread his fame far beyond his native land. He lived for his art and his home, mixing little in society. "When I want to give my wits a rest," he said, "I do not look for honour, but for liberty." "When he was painting," said one of his biographers, "he would not have given audience to the greatest monarch on earth, but would have compelled even such an one to wait or to come again when he was more at leisure." He never travelled, even in Holland, and he dwelt apart. He had few books, but his taste in art was catholic. To his passion for collecting we have already referred. His house, which still stands in the Breedstraat, was a museum of curiosities, containing costly materials, stuffed animals, richly ornamented weapons, casts, engravings, and pictures (including works by Palma Vecchio and Giorgione). The pearls, precious stones, rich necklaces, clasps and bracelets of every kind that Saskia wears in her portraits were not gems of the painter's imagination, but actual objects from the jewel-cases which he filled for his wife. "When Rembrandt was present at a sale," says Baldinucci, "it was his habit, especially when pictures drawn by great masters were put up, to make an enormous advance on the first bid, which generally silenced all competition. To those who expressed their surprise at such a proceeding, he replied that by this means he hoped to raise the status of his profession." This lordly buying was the undoing of Rembrandt's worldly fortunes. In 1642 Saskia died, and his financial embarrassments, which had already begun, went from worse to worse. In 1656 he was declared bankrupt; his house and collections were sold, and at the age of fifty-one he found himself homeless and penniless. He was stripped, we read, even of his household linen, though of this, to be sure, he seems to have had but a meagre store. In his life, as in his art, there were heavy shadows; but the light shines out in his undaunted perseverance. He had lived for some years with his servant, Hendrickje Stoffels, an uneducated peasant, who served him as a model, and whose homely features appear in many of the pictures of his middle period (_see e.g._ No. 54). In 1654 Rembrandt had been summoned before the elders of the Church on account of the irregularity of their relationship. But Hendrickje was a good