After Rembrandt's home was sold, he hired a house on the Rosengracht, a
retired but respectable part of the city, two blocks away from the
Bloemgracht, where he began life with his beloved Saskia. Here, as
elsewhere, he gathered admiring pupils about him, and kept diligently at
his work. It is probable that he was married at this time, or later, for
in 1663 he painted a picture known as "Rembrandt and his Family," now in
the Brunswick Museum, where a rosy and smiling lady is seated with a
child on her lap, while two little girls of perhaps five and seven stand
by her. The man with brown hair stands on the left, giving a flower to
one of the girls.
Rembrandt's chief works now were "Moses descending from Sinai, and
breaking the Tables of the Law," "Jacob wrestling with the Angels," a
striking picture of "Ziska and his Adherents swearing to avenge the
Death of Huss," and "The Syndics of the Guild of Clothmakers," now in
the Amsterdam Museum.
Professor Springer writes concerning the latter picture, the "School of
Anatomy," and "The Night Watch:" "Art has never again created a greater
wealth of stirring imagery or poetry of color so entrancing as these
three pictures reveal to us. Unconsciously our thoughts return to
Shakspeare's familiar creations, and we recognize in these two mighty
art champions of the north kindred natures and a corresponding bent of
fancy."
In 1668, Titus, now twenty-seven years old,--he studied painting, but
became a merchant,--was married to his cousin Magdalena van Loo, one of
the Frisian families, and died in September of the same year. The next
March, his widow bore a daughter who received the name of Titia, for her
dead father. Magdalena died in the same year in which her child was
born. Thus frequently did sorrow shadow the path of the great master of
shadows.
This year, Rembrandt painted several portraits of himself. "In that of
the Pitti Palace, we see him wrapped in fur, a medal is hung about his
neck, and he is wearing a close-fitting cap, from which his ample white
hair escapes. His face is furrowed with age, but the brightness of the
eye is not diminished....
"In the splendid portrait in the Double Collection at Rouen, he again
stands before us, with bending attitude and slightly inclined head, in
theatrical costume, with his maulstick in his hand, laughing heartily.
And this is Rembrandt's farewell! His face is wrinkled across and across
by time and care, but it is no gloomy misanthrope crushed by evil
fortune whom we see, but the man who opposed to all fortunes the
talisman of Labor, and thus paints the secret of his life in his final
portrait of himself, in the midst of his work, scorning destiny."
A year after Titus died, death came to Rembrandt, at sixty-two. He was
buried simply in the West Church, so simply that the registered expense
of his burial is fifteen florins!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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