The next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in Rembrandt's career. At Amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his happiness and success were completed by his marrying Saskia van Ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom Rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. To this period belong the numerous portraits of himself and Saskia, alone or together, most of which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly different from the profusion of Rubens, but far more intense. Living among the wealthiest Jews in Amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly attracted by their orientalism, and while Rubens gloried in natural abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full sunlight, Rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. The portraits of himself in a cap at Hertford House (No. 52), and of the Old Lady in the National Gallery (No. 775), both painted in 1634, are notable examples of this period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the various portraits of Saskia, or in _The Turk_ at Munich. The two double portraits at Hertford House of Jean Pellicorne and his wife with their son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to fall upon him. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI.--REMBRANDT PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS _Louvre, Paris_] In 1642 the beloved Saskia died, leaving an only child, Titus, whose features are familiar to us in the portrait at Hertford House. As though this were not affliction enough, Rembrandt had the mortification of offending his patrons over the commission to paint Captain Banning Cocq's Company. From this time onward, as the world and Rembrandt drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more wonderful.