Great Masters in Painting: Rembrandt van Rijn Part 3

He had decided to settle himself finally, not long after the birth on July 1st, 1638, of his second child, a daughter, christened at the Oudekerk on July 22nd, Cornelia, after his mother, and on January 5th, 1639, had purchased from one Christoffel Thysz a house in the Joden-Breestraat, now Number 68, for 13,000 florins. Though only one quarter of this sum had to be paid within one year, the rest being distributed over the following five or six, he seems for once to have been actually eager to pay the money, and by May had discharged half the cost and taken possession.

One birth and three deaths mark the year 1640. The first, of another daughter, on July 29th, who was also christened Cornelia, the elder child bearing that name having died in the meantime. The name, however, seems to have been an ill-omened one, for its second bearer did not survive a month, its burial being recorded in the Zuiderkerk on August 25th. Of the other deaths the first was that of an aunt of Saskia, who was possibly also her G.o.dmother, as she bore the same name, and certainly left her some property, since Ferdinand Bol was sent, on August 30th, to Leeuwarden with formal authority to take possession on her behalf. The other death must have been, to Rembrandt at any rate, a far heavier blow, for by it he lost, in September or October, his mother, to whom he was cordially attached, and from whom his residence in Amsterdam had only partially separated him, since we know by various portraits, painted subsequent to 1631, that either he visited her or she him with considerable frequency.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_National Gallery, London_

PORTRAIT OF REMBRANDT

(1640)]

An event arising out of the consequent settlement of the estate has given rise to the suspicion that, then at all events, Rembrandt was in difficulties, but it is again possible to take another point of view.

The inheritance of each child amounted to 2490 florins, and a further 1600 remained to be divided later. The business was entrusted to Adriaen and Lysbeth, and Rembrandt, unhesitatingly accepting every suggestion made by them, contented himself with a mortgage on half the mill, the redemption of which was to be postponed indefinitely. No sooner, however, was the arrangement completed than he authorised his brother Willem to sell his rights for what they would fetch. This may mean, as M. Michel supposes, that he wanted the money promptly, yet wished to deal tenderly with a brother who was himself by no means beforehand with the world; but the two reasons seem somewhat inconsistent with the facts. That Rembrandt, even though pressed for money himself, should have practically forgone his due, and consented to take a small annual interest which he could, in case necessity arose, easily forgo, is quite reconcilable with what we know of him; but that, having acted so, he should have at once undone the good he proposed, by selling his claim to some stranger, who would certainly demand the full letter of his bond, is hard to believe.

Any other evidence concerning these presumed embarra.s.sments is certainly against them. At this very time he was cheerfully accepting security for considerable sums of money lent, in addition to the original one thousand florins, to Hendrick van Uylenborch; and in later years, when his affairs came to be inquired into, Lodewyck van Lud.i.c.k and Adriaen de Wees, dealers both, swore that between 1640 and 1650 Rembrandt's collections, without counting the pictures, were worth 11,000 florins, while a jeweller, Jan van Loo, stated that Saskia had two large pear-shaped pearls, two rows of valuable pearls forming a necklace and bracelets, a large diamond in a ring, two diamond earrings, two enamelled bracelets, and various articles of plate. Finally, Rembrandt also, at a later date, estimated that his estate at the time of Saskia's death amounted to 40,750 florins; and though the estimate was made under circ.u.mstances calculated to incline him to exaggerate rather than diminish the amount, it must be considered as approximately correct.

Poor Saskia was not destined to enjoy much longer her plate and jewellery. Death, having entered the family, was thenceforth busy. t.i.tia died at Flus.h.i.+ng on June 16th, 1641; and Saskia herself, after the birth of t.i.tus in September of that year, possibly never enjoyed really good health again. By the following spring she was unmistakably failing, and at nine in the morning of June 5th, 1642, she made her will. She was not even then without hope of recovery, for there are express stipulations as to any further children she might bear, but the pitiful irregularity of her signature at the end of the doc.u.ment shows how forlorn this hope was; and, in fact, she died within the following fortnight, and was buried on the 19th of June in the Oudekerk, where Rembrandt subsequently purchased the place of her sepulture.

Upon what this loss must have meant to Rembrandt, with his affectionate nature and almost morbid devotion to a home-life I need not dwell, nor did Fate rest content with dealing him this single blow. The great picture, which forms the chief ornament of the Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam, "The Sortie of the Company of Banning Cocq," better known under the inaccurate t.i.tle of "The Night-Watch," was no sooner completed, in the course of the same year, than it aroused a storm of vituperative criticism. The reasons for this I must defer till I come to the consideration of the paintings, and must only note the fact here, and the dwindling of Rembrandt's popularity, which appears to have been, to some extent at least, the consequence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_Dresden Gallery_

PORTRAIT OF SASKIA

(1641)]

One dim ray of consolation alone seems to beam through the darkness that overshadowed him, Lievensz, who had long been absent, first in England and subsequently in Antwerp, came to settle in Amsterdam, and doubtless did all that in him lay to comfort his doubly-stricken friend. In the meantime the business matters so loathed by him, and now aggravated by their intimate connection with his bereavement, had to be attended to, though, through the consideration of Saskia's relatives, they were made as easy for him as well might be. Saskia, by her will, left everything practically to Rembrandt, confident that he would properly educate t.i.tus and start him in life. Ostensibly, indeed, her share of the estate was left to t.i.tus and any other children she might bear, but she expressly stipulated that he was not to be asked to provide any inventory or guarantees to anyone whatsoever. She particularly forbade the interference of any Chamber of Orphans, in especial that at Amsterdam.

Rembrandt alone was to have control, and the property, princ.i.p.al and interest, was to all intents his own, unless--an important exception as we shall find--he married again. In that case half of the joint estate at the time of her death was to be put in trust for the child or children, though Rembrandt was still to enjoy the interest for life. It was obvious that the making at once of an inventory of all the property in his possession was the only right course to pursue, in order that the share which might eventually revert to t.i.tus should be accurately known, for Rembrandt was but six-and-thirty, and his re-marriage by no means impossible. He, however, wished to avoid this course, doubtless through that over-mastering distaste for business to which I have had and shall have occasion to refer so often, and having the consent of Hendrick van Uylenborch, obtained permission from the Chamber of Orphans, on December 19th, to enter into possession of the estate without any estimate of its value being recorded.

CHAPTER IV

DAYS OF DECLINE

He was then starting upon the downward course which was leading him to utter ruin. In the course of the following years, Fas.h.i.+on, who had decreed that he was the one painter to patronise, shook her fickle wings and flew off to others, and thenceforth decried her former favourite with the more ignorant dispraise because of her equally ignorant paeans in the past.

It was in vain that the Stathouder continued his patronage, giving him a commission for two pictures, "The Circ.u.mcision" and "The Adoration of the Shepherds," for which, on the twenty-ninth of September 1646, he paid the sum of 2400 florins, just double what he had paid before. It was in vain that the rising artists could not fail to perceive his transcendent merits, and that pupils from all Europe sought him out, Michiel Willemans, Ulric Mayr, and Franz Wulfhagen, Christoph Paudiss, Juriaen Avens, Bernard Keilh, Cornelis Drost, Nicholas Maes, Carel Fabritius, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and many more. He had ceased, apparently, to attract the public. At any rate, though his productive energy was unabated, his affairs grew ever more and more involved.

In 1647, Saskia's relations began to be alarmed, demanding that the valuation of the property at the date of her death should be ascertained without delay, and Rembrandt replied that to the best of his belief it had been 40,750 florins. It is a little difficult to understand what right they had to formulate this demand, since, according to the will, the property was virtually Rembrandt's own, unless he married again, and this, to all appearance, he had, at that time, no idea of doing, though rumours to the contrary may well have reached their ears. A certain Geertje Dircx, the widow of one Abraham Claesz, who had been engaged, probably not long after Saskia's death, as nurse to the infant t.i.tus, who was always delicate, came in time to hope that she might aspire to rank as his step-mother; on January 24th, 1648, she made her will, neglecting the relations we know her to have had and bequeathing everything she legally could to t.i.tus. Within two years, however, on October 1st, 1649, she repudiated her will, gave Rembrandt warning, and brought against him the equivalent of an action for breach of promise of marriage, to which he replied by an affidavit denying that their relations had ever been other than those of master and servant. In fact, her pretensions seem to have been only the delusions of her disordered brain, for in the course of the next year, 1650, she had to be removed and placed in confinement in a madhouse at Gouda, for which Rembrandt advanced the expenses, and, needless to say, never got them back.

We have not, moreover, far to seek for a reason for her explosion of temper in 1649 if she really believed her master meant to marry her, for on that very same October 1st, in reference to some otherwise unimportant disturbances of the neighbourhood by a drunken man, we find a certain Hendrickje Stoffels, of Ransdorp, in Westphalia, giving evidence on Rembrandt's behalf. Of the subsequent relations between her and Rembrandt there can be, unfortunately, no doubt whatever. She was at that time three-and-twenty, and a pleasant-looking girl enough, as her portrait, now in the Louvre, makes clear, and that her devotion to Rembrandt was not at all events self-seeking, the future made abundantly evident. As long as she lived, she remained attached to him, through evil fortune and ill-report, and, though there was too good reason for the step, she is generally believed to have never asked or expected him to "make an honest woman of her," as the phrase goes. To this belief, however, I hesitate to subscribe; indeed, I incline to the conviction that the description of her given in a lawsuit on October 27th, 1661, as his lawful wife, "huysfrouw," the very t.i.tle he himself gave to Saskia, was strictly accurate. There is not, it must be admitted, another particle of direct evidence that it was so, though this in itself is not to be despised, but there are circ.u.mstances not a few that point in the same direction.

While the connection was irregular, and to begin with, at least, it undoubtedly was so, there was never any concealment or shamefacedness about the matter, nor do Rembrandt's friends, not even the respectable Burgomaster Six, seem to have looked askance upon it. It is true that in 1654 she was summoned, somewhat tardily, before the Consistory of her church, severely admonished, and forbidden to communicate. That, of course, was inevitable from their point of view, and only shows how absolutely open the arrangement was. How improbable it is then that in later years she should have deliberately perjured herself on the question when, if it were perjury, the evidence to convict her must have been overwhelming. There can, indeed, have been no doubt, long before this church summons, as to the relations between them, for in 1652 she gave birth to a child which did not, however, survive long, as we know that it was buried in the Zuiderkerk on August 15th.

In October 1654, a second daughter was born, and was christened on October 30th, Cornelia, in itself a somewhat significant circ.u.mstance.

We cannot, I fear, claim any very subtle delicacy of taste for Rembrandt, it appertained not to his race or time; but it seems more than strange that he should have given to an illegitimate child the name which had been borne by his mother and by two luckless infants of the dead Saskia. Taking all these facts together, I venture to conjecture that we may still hope to hear some day of the discovery of proof that some time, probably between July when she was rebuked, and October when the child was baptised, Rembrandt, moved perhaps by the public disgrace of the girl once more about to become the mother of his child, was duly married to her.

Indeed, if he had not married someone, how came it that in 1665 Louis Crayers, the guardian of t.i.tus, was able to establish, before the Grand Council, his claim on behalf of his ward against Rembrandt's estate, then in bankruptcy, for 20,375 florins, the half of the property at the time of Saskia's death three-and-twenty years before? Unless Rembrandt had married again t.i.tus would appear to have had no shadow of a claim to princ.i.p.al or interest, yet the case was fought out to the bitter end, and it seems quite incredible that the creditors should have been ignorant of, or should have failed to produce, so important a piece of evidence in their favour. Since t.i.tus' claim was allowed, it is obvious that Rembrandt must have remarried, and, if so, there can be no doubt that it was to the true and faithful Hendrickje.

I have, however, been led to antic.i.p.ate too far in the attempt to make this reasoning clear, and must return to 1649, in which year Rembrandt took a second step on his road to bankruptcy by ceasing to pay either instalments of the sum remaining due for the house, or even the interest upon it. Indications of the approaching disaster now follow thick and fast. At some time between 1650 and 1652 the pearl necklace which appears in so many of the pictures was sold to Philips Koninck. In 1651, so wholly out of favour was Rembrandt's art deemed to be, that Jan de Baer, a young artist, on leaving the studio of Backer, under whom he had been studying, after hesitating for awhile as to whether he should turn to Rembrandt or Van Dyck for further instruction, chose the latter, because his style was most durable.

By 1653 Rembrandt seems to have finally abandoned himself to the current which was drifting him so rapidly to wreck. On January 29th he borrowed 4180 florins from Cornelis Witsen on the hopeless undertaking to repay it in a year, and three days later, on February 1st, his long-suffering landlord Thysz entered a claim for 8470 florins still owing to him.

Rembrandt, with a sharpness due probably rather to his lawyer than to himself, demanded that the t.i.tle-deeds should be delivered to him first.

Then, on March 14th, he borrowed a further 4200 florins from Isaac van Heertsbeeck, also repayable in a year, and after trying, apparently in vain, through Francois de Koster, to recover some of the large sums of money that must have been owing to him, he obtained from Six yet another loan on the guarantee of Ludowyck van Lud.i.c.k. With this temporary relief he in part paid off Thysz, but 1170 florins still remained to be paid, and for this amount the creditor obtained a mortgage on the house.

The end was now drawing near. One more effort, however, was made to avert the crash. A certain Dirck van Cattenburch, a collector of works of art, presuming that, in the state of Rembrandt's affairs, the large house in the Breestraat could only be an enc.u.mbrance to him, proposed to relieve him of it by a sufficiently curious arrangement. He was professedly to sell him another, doubtless a smaller one, for 4000 florins; but, in fact, he was to give Rembrandt the house and 1000 florins in cash. For the remaining 3000 florins Rembrandt was to deliver pictures and etchings of that value, and furthermore? to etch a portrait, in a style not less finished than that of Six, of Dirck's brother Otto, the secretary of Count Brederode of Vianen, which was to be considered the equivalent of 400 florins. How far this elaborate transaction was carried out is uncertain. Rembrandt obtained the 1000 florins, and handed over pictures and etchings of his own, or from his collection, valued by Abraham Francen and van Lud.i.c.k at over 3000 florins, but we hear no more of the house or the portrait.

It was in vain that his friends seem to have developed a perfect mania for being etched or painted by him--Six and Tholinx, Deyman the doctor, the two Harings, father and son--neither loans nor earnings could for long stave off the evil day. As if ill-luck dogged the family, his brother Adriaen had so managed to misconduct the business of the mill that he and the sister Lysbeth were also on the verge of ruin, and Rembrandt, in the midst of his own troubles, had to come to their a.s.sistance. Small wonder, then, that the end was hastened. On May 17th, 1656, one Jan Verbout was appointed guardian to t.i.tus in the place of Rembrandt, and on the same day, before the Chamber of Orphans, the unfortunate artist transferred his rights in the house to his son. Soon afterwards he was formally declared bankrupt, and on July 25th and the following day an inventory was made "of paintings, furniture, and domestic utensils connected with the failure of Rembrandt van Rijn, formerly living in the Breestraat near the lock of St Anthony." The inventory still exists, and is full of interest, giving, as it does, a complete description of every room in the house, from the pictures in the studio to the saucepans in the kitchen, but want of s.p.a.ce forbids any extended extracts from it here.

The law seems to have moved slower in those days even than in these.

Rembrandt continued for some time to dwell in the house, and, apart from the business worries, the little family appears to have been a united and contented one. How united we discover from the will that t.i.tus made on October 20th, 1657, and rectified on November 22nd. By that time Rembrandt's utter incapacity for business was probably recognised even by himself, and all that t.i.tus possessed was left to Hendrickje and her daughter Cornelia in trust for him. Nevertheless, as if to smooth over the slur upon his father's improvidence, he provided that Rembrandt might draw a certain share, on condition that he did not employ it to pay his debts, a most unlikely use, it is to be feared, for him to put it to, except, like Falstaff, "upon compulsion." The remainder was to go to Cornelia on her marriage or coming of age. The whole of the interest, in the event of Rembrandt's death, was to go to Hendrickje and Cornelia, and there are certain other arrangements of less importance concerning the disposal of the property on Cornelia's decease.

A month later the law at last gave forth its p.r.o.nouncement, and the commissioners authorised Thomas Jacobsz Haring, an officer of the Court, to sell the effects of the bankrupt by auction. The worst had befallen; the home in which he had pa.s.sed eighteen years, many of them happy, and all full of industry, was his no more. The little family was temporarily broken up. Rembrandt moved to the Crown Imperial Inn, kept by one Schumann in the Kalverstraat, which ran southwards from the Dam, a handsome and commodious house, which had at one time been the Munic.i.p.al Orphanage, and was then the customary place for holding auctions.

Whether Hendrickje, t.i.tus, and Cornelia went with him we do not know. M.

Michel concludes, from the fact that Rembrandt's daily expenses, included in the records of the case, were three or four florins, that they certainly did not; but if the already-mentioned provision of 125 florins a year was considered sufficient support for the crippled brother, more than eight times that amount might surely have sufficed for four people, two of whom were children.

On December 25th, the sale of Rembrandt's property began in the very house where he was lodging, but only a small portion of the goods was then sold.

The wheels of the law, once started, ground evenly and small. On January 30th, 1658, the commissioners ordered the repayment to Witsen and van Heertsbeeck of the money they had lent. The heirs of Christoffel Thysz were also paid, in spite of the protests of Louis Crayers, who had by then replaced Verbout as guardian of t.i.tus, and, as such, a.s.serted his prior claim on the estate to the extent, according to Rembrandt's own estimate in 1647, 20,375 florins. The other creditors, taking advantage of Rembrandt's afore-mentioned failure to make an inventory at the time, protested loudly that the demand was much exaggerated, and a cloud of witnesses was summoned to give such evidence as they could concerning the possessions of the pair at the time that Saskia died. Several of these statements have already been referred to in this narrative; but, in addition, Jan Pietersz, a draper, Abraham Wilmerdonx, director of the East India Company, Hendrick van Uylenborch, Nicholas van Cunysbergen, and others, gave testimony as to property owned by, or prices paid to, the bankrupt in former years.

In the meantime, on February 1st, 1658, at the request of Henricus Torquinius, the official who had charge of the business, the house in the Breestraat was sold to one Pieter Wiebrantsz, a mason, for 13,600 florins, but for some reason the bargain was not completed, and a second purchaser came forward with an offer of 12,000. There appear, however, to have been doubts as to his ability to pay, and it was finally transferred to a shoemaker, Lieven Simonsz, for 11,218 florins. Finally, in September, the pictures, engravings, and other objects of art were sold by auction, bringing in the ridiculous sum of 5000 florins, and all the possessions that Rembrandt had collected with such loving care and at so great a cost were scattered to the four winds.

It is pleasant to find that, in all this tribulation, many of his old friends still stood by him and endeavoured to help him to commissions.

In 1660, for example, Govert Flinck, who was engaged on the decoration of the Grand Gallery in the Town Hall, having died, it became necessary to find someone to take his place. Rembrandt had never been much in favour with the town authorities, but on this occasion, possibly through the efforts of his old friend Tulp, who had been treasurer in 1658 and 1659, he was invited to carry on the work, and, as M. Michel has conclusively shown, painted for them a large picture of the conspiracy of Claudius Civilis. The opposition, however, apparently proved too strong, for it seems doubtful if the picture was ever seen in the place it was intended for. It did not, at any rate, remain there long.

On May 5th, 1660, we get another glimpse of the law proceedings when Heertsbeeck was ordered to pay back the 4200 florins which the Court had formerly awarded him, though Witsen was allowed to retain his 4180. On December 15th of the same year Hendrickje made a final effort to restore to some extent the prosperity of the household. With all proper circ.u.mstance, she entered on that day into partners.h.i.+p with t.i.tus, legalising an a.s.sociation between them, informally established two years before, for the purpose of dealing in pictures, engravings, and curiosities. Both he and she contributed everything that they possessed to a common fund, and each was to be ent.i.tled to a half share of the stock. Rembrandt, partly, no doubt, from his proved incompetency for business, partly, perhaps, to keep out of the clutches of the creditors, was allowed no share whatever in the profits. As, however, it was necessary that Hendrickje, who knew nothing of such matters, and t.i.tus, who was not yet of age, should have aid and a.s.sistance in the venture, and as no one was more capable of giving this than Rembrandt, it was provided that he should make himself as useful as possible in furthering the interests of the firm, and in return should have board, lodging, and certain allowances.

It was, perhaps, as judicious an arrangement as could be made for Rembrandt's sake, but it is not wonderful that the creditors, who saw all chances of their getting anything further vanis.h.i.+ng into thin air, should have been fierce in their protests. How far the a.s.sociation prospered we do not know. Probably not too well, for Dr Bredius has gathered together a ma.s.s of evidence to show that a large proportion of the art-dealers in Amsterdam at that period came to disastrous financial ends. It served, at any rate, to keep a roof over their heads, and the wolf from the door, for we find them again settled down, this time in the Rozengracht, in a house opposite a pleasure garden called the Doolhof.

In 1661, an old friend again came to his support; for it was probably van de Cappelle, who was a dyer as well as a painter, who procured for him the commission to paint "The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild," which he so splendidly achieved. By this time there is some reason for supposing that yet another trouble was coming upon Rembrandt. As far as we know, he never executed any etchings after 1661, and M. Michel suspected that this might have been due to failing sight. A study, moreover, of the portraits painted from that time onwards, reveals the fact that a large majority of them, if not actually all, were conspicuously, some even enormously, larger than life, and that would in all probability be a symptom of the same misfortune. These two facts cannot, of course, be considered as furnis.h.i.+ng absolute proof, but they certainly go to create a probability; nor can we regard the supposition that the overstrained nerves were giving way at last as in any way unlikely when we reflect how incessantly Rembrandt had worked his eyesight, and how minutely finished had been much of his work, especially among the etchings, many of which were undoubtedly executed by artificial light, after his day's painting was ended. It would be but one more burden of distress laid upon those heavily-laden shoulders.

In truth, the story of the few remaining years is but a record of stroke after stroke. On August 7th, 1661, the faithful Hendrickje was so seriously ill, that, in spite of its being a Sunday, she made her will, leaving, as was but right, all her property to Cornelia, but with the stipulation that, in case of her death, t.i.tus was to inherit, though his father was to enjoy the income as long as he lived. That she recovered at that time we know from her appearance on October 27th, as a witness in the case of the drunken man already referred to; but the recovery must have been only temporary, for, after this last appearance, we hear of her no more, though we do not know the exact date of her death. There is, however, M. Michel believes, a reason for supposing it to have occurred in the autumn of 1662. On October 27th in that year Rembrandt sold the vault he had purchased in the Oudekerk, which was no longer his parish church. It was, nevertheless, an odd thing to do, since poor little Saskia lay there; and M. Michel, in seeking an explanation, conjectures that he was at that time under the necessity of providing for the burial of Hendrickje in the Westerkerk, and that the sale was a sheer necessity. There is, at any rate, no portrait of her known to have been painted after 1662, and the conjecture that she died that year is at least a plausible one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_Louvre, Paris_

PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS

(ABOUT 1652)]

In the course of the same year, we hear of the last pupil coming to Rembrandt, Aert de Gelder, whose youthful enthusiasm may have brought some brightness, we may hope, into the life of the poor broken old man.

Meanwhile, the echoes of the law courts still rumbled in his ears, for, on December 22nd, Isaac Van Heertsbeeck, who had evidently not complied with the previous order of the Court in 1660, was again commanded to refund the 4200 florins, and again appealed.

Rembrandt had by then so completely dropped out of public ken, that we only get dim and fleeting glimpses of him. In 1664, we hear of him moving to the Lauriergracht, still farther to the south-east, and it is not until affairs draw him from seclusion that we learn more of him, and then only indirectly. We may, perhaps, conclude, however, from the scarcity of his works during these last years, that his eyes, and possibly general health, were getting ever worse.

On January 27th, 1665, van Heertsbeeck's protracted struggle came to an end, and the Grand Council decided that by June 20th the money must be repaid. On June 19th, Rembrandt and t.i.tus appealed to the law to antic.i.p.ate the coming of age of the latter, so that he might be legally considered of years of discretion before the actual arrival of his twenty-fifth birthday, a request which must have been connected with a foreknowledge of the decision delivered the next day, June 20th, in favour of Louis Crayers. This meant that the rights of t.i.tus to the full amount of his mother's fortune of 20,375 florins were allowed; but only 6952 florins remained, and of this, on November 5th, t.i.tus was authorised to take possession in his own name. It was but a scanty fraction of what he should have had, but it was something, and the little windfall may have had some part in the return of the family to the Rozengracht. Of the next two years we know nothing, except that we learn from a portrait of Jeremias de Decker, a poet who wrote eulogistic verses on the painter, that neither the man nor the artist was entirely neglected. The first sounds that come again to us out of the darkness are those of wedding bells on the occasion of the marriage of t.i.tus with his cousin Magdalena, the daughter of Cornelia van Uylenborch and of Albert van Loo, whose quarrel with Rembrandt years before had clearly been forgotten. The note of merriment was, however, too quickly changed for one of dolour, for ere the year was out t.i.tus was dead, as we learn from the record of his burial in the Westerkerk, on September 4th, 1668.

In March 1669, the widowed Magdalena gave birth to a daughter, and, on the twenty-second of that month, Rembrandt stood by while the only grandchild he was to see was christened t.i.tia. We catch thereafter some murmurs of that business which he so hated, in connection with the settlement of the respective shares which the little t.i.tia and Cornelia were to draw from the remainder of the old a.s.sociation between their respective parents; and then again comes silence, until, from an entry in the Doelboek, the registry of deaths in the Westerkerk, we learn that the long, slow, downward path has ended, where all paths end, in the grave.