Rembrandt: Behind the Artist

[Music] no artist before him had ever created so many self-portraits Armand soon van Rhine better known by his first name Rembrandt this 17th century Dutch painter is one of the greatest artists of all time and his chiaroscuro his use of light and shade is familiar to everyone amongst the 600 or more Rembrandt canvases hanging in the great museums of the world many are regarded as unsurpassed masterpieces during his lifetime Rembrandt painted more than 100 self-portraits often uncompromising in their honesty they represent a unique record of a man's physical and emotional development and they bear witness to a life that was both brilliantly successful and at times dark acclaimed by his contemporaries as the young man by the end of his life he'd been all that cast aside Rembrandt from light to dark [Music] [Music] [Music] Rembrandt's story began here in Holland at the very beginning of the 17th century in this landscape where the land meets the sea and the sky [Music] at the time the country was known as the United Provinces and was emerging from war with its Spanish occupiers the newly forged nation was about to experience a unique period in its history the Dutch Golden Age by creating the world's first stock exchange in Amsterdam the country saw an unprecedented economic boom and thanks to the Dutch East India Company its huge fleet of merchant ships dominated the world's trade routes above all its tolerance of different faiths attracted scholars from all over Europe to the center of learning at Leyden a few kilometres from Amsterdam Leyden was home to the country's first University which welcomed figures that his Descartes and Spinoza and it was here that Rembrandt Hartmann xun van Ryan was born on the 15th of July 1606 his parents were mill owners and were comfortably well-off Rembrandt belonged to a family of Millers his father was a Miller it's a profession which was not highly regarded in social terms but financially it was pretty comfortable since Miller's in those days were guaranteed a regular income flour is an essential ingredient for making bread and bread was a staple food thanks to his parents comfortable position in society Rembrandt's childhood was a happy one lived to the rhythm of the seasons and the hum of the mill wheels the family home was north of the town on the banks of the Rhine and beyond the mill there was nothing but fields and pastures for the young Rembrandt to gaze upon the Bible provided bedside reading and the Gospels and parables also helped to form his childhood imagination Rembrandt's mother Cornelia who appears later in his paintings was a Catholic to her son she passed on the one fundamental tenet of her faith which was love thy neighbor his father Harmon was a Protestant but his marriage to a Catholic showed a tolerant Protestant spirit [Music] [Applause] [Music] the opportunities for entertainment were rare but in winter when the canals were frozen Rembrandt's family like all families in Holland put on heavy skates with metal blades and went out to have fun on the ice in summer when the weather was fair the landscape took on tones conducive to reverie [Music] the years that followed were devoted to study and the discovery of a growing passion [Music] Rembrandt had just turned eight years old when his parents decided he should attend the Latin School at Leyden this was a remarkable opportunity as it gave him access to an education that few children at the time could hope for even in affluent circles [Music] engraved in Latin on the building's pediment was the motto piety languages and liberal arts Nicola teen sue the Latin school was basically what we call a secondary school but the 17th century equivalent it taught languages including Dutch but above all ancient languages and primarily Latin the pupil studied the main texts of the time of poetry and literature basically the school turned out well trained minds by means of the different disciplines at the liberal arts every day except for Sunday Rembrandt went to school from 6:00 in the morning until 7:00 in the evening the day began with prayers followed by a reading and discussion of a passage from the Bible for 7 years this high quality education gave Rembrandt a rich intellectual training and the keys to think for himself this spirit of Independence would stay with him forever it was at the Latin School that Rembrandt learned the art of drawing and painting it proved a revelation he knew with the enthusiastic certainty of youth that he would be a painter and nothing else Oh Rembrandt left the Latin school at the age of 14 and decided to become a painter what's interesting is that his parents supported his decision this was perhaps partly because Rembrandt's father's estate was already taken care of by the older brother which gave Rembrandt a certain freedom with regards to his choice of professions painting at the time was a craft but it could be profitable if the artists knew how to please the middle classes and the public figures who were increasingly eager for portraits in former times princes were entitled to their own portrait and the middle class is thought why not me so in many bourgeois homes one could find prominently displayed portraits honoring the head of the family lip painters weren't exclusively to decorate interiors and for the art market so they were craftsmen who had to train like all craftsmen at the time as an apprentice in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch Swanberg painted representations of hell but mostly he produced portraits and scenes of daily life it was in his workshop that Rembrandt started his apprenticeship as an apprentice he learned all the mundane aspects of the painters trade for example how to prepare a canvas by stretching it out on the frame or by applying a ground layer he learned to prepare pigments and of course Swanberg taught him all the tricks of the trade in other words drawing composition and the use of color and the basics like all apprentices Rembrandt stayed with Swanberg from 14 to 17 years of age during those three years he learned the fundamentals and the principles of his art how to stretch a canvas on a frame how to prepare the pigments how to make colors for three years he tirelessly carried out the tasks required by his chosen profession he drew with pencil and with ink and tried his hand at engraving he learned by copying his master none of the works created by Rembrandt during this period have come down to us but by the end of his apprenticeship visitors to the workshop had begun to recognize the young man's talent and despite his meager experience he began to conceive of a certain ambition Rembrandt quickly developed an amazing talent people could see that he was a highly gifted painter and he soon outgrew what Swan and berg had to teach him Rembrandt had just turned 17 his apprenticeship was over and he was aware of his own talent but he was hungry for knowledge he needed a new teacher and he wanted the best on leaving Swan and Berg's workshop Rembrandt decided to complete his training with a relatively short period of six months spent with another painter who was much better known and was one of the most important painters in Amsterdam at that time so he left Leyden faster damn to spend six months with Pierre Talisman it demonstrates Rembrandt's foresight that he realized at that young age it he needed to broaden his training following his ambition Rembrandt set out by boat for Amsterdam [Music] Peter last man was one of the city's best-known and most admired painters he had acquired his skills by studying under the Italian masters he was regarded as one of the best painters of the day for creating major biblical and mythological works Rembrandt wanted to know the secrets of their composition but he knew they were a source of lucrative commissions joining Lastman's workshop meant studying under a painter who'd been to Italy and had seen a great many Italian paintings so for Rembrandt it was almost like going to Italy himself he was requiring a much more significant level of culture than what he'd received from Swanberg these early years were marked by an ambition a determination to master this trade as fully as possible like a bee sucking nectar he absorbed as much as possible when he went to last man studio in Amsterdam for around six months you can see that he acquired from last man a way of drawing a way of painting [Music] in only a few months Rembrandt had perfectly assimilated Peter Lastman's expertise he felt ready to stand on his own two feet it was 1624 Rembrandt was 18 and over the next few years he was to develop the fundamentals of his painting and see his fame begin to grow from Amsterdam he returned to Leyden in teaming up with another young prodigy the painter yan Levin's Rembrandt again revealed his sound judgment levins was also a former pupil of Peter last Minh and he too had learned to paint biblical scenes above all the young painter had already begun to received major commissions they opened a studio together and in this way Rembrandt was able to profit from Levin's list of contacts around the dwell Rembrandt had to succeed in Amsterdam and we can see some of his personality traits when he shares a studio with Lee Evans we know that he made every effort to show that he was the one playing the leading role and not his colleague in Nampa song colleague Rembrandt was 19 when he painted his first canvas the stoning of Saint Stephen this composition proved that he had fully assimilated Lastman's know-how and that he was able to represent major historical scenes there are many original elements in this painting the way it is staged with a foreground which serves to focus our attention on the essential scene which is the stoning and there is a background to the stoning scene so straight away and it was to become a constant in his work he knows how to set the scene in this painting he lent his own features to the main character and thus created his first self-portrait by taking center stage in the painting he is signaling his ambition to be at the forefront of his profession one year later in another historical scene here he is again but this time his face is obscured by a scepter what is striking about his work is that from the outset Rembrandt is attracted by dilapidation he's not interested in making pretty paintings he's interested in ordinary people like this boy with his squash nose or like this scribe whose unprepossessing features are at the center of the picture [Music] that same year he made a series of paintings on the theme of the five senses and we can again remark his interest in people with ordinary or unattractive faces alongside his painting Rembrandt began engraving he knew that if he wanted to gain a reputation he must start getting his work known and in those days engraving was the way to do it engravings were to be found on sale in book shops and affairs and markets less costly than paintings because they could be reduced in a series they were the best means for an artist who advertised his talents engraving was a bit like photographic reproduction today it was the only way that painters could ensure their images were seen beyond the small circle of art lovers who had direct access to their works on canvas he absolutely understood at a very young age because he wasn't even 20 when he began that what had enabled dira a century or so earlier to immediately become famous throughout Europe was engraving so Rembrandt developed his engraving technique with exceptional intensity for a simple reason that these were works which were intended essentially for export as you might say [Music] in order to reach a wide public rembrandt drew on his childhood imagination he illustrated the Bible which he had spent so much time reading he was still signing his work rhl a Rembrandt the son of the laden Miller he sought his life models in the streets and amongst his own family he betrayed his father his mother but also vagabonds and humble folk whose humanity he captured and idealized in his engravings in the other there are drawings and engravings in which we clearly see the empathy with which he depicts the story as it is described in the Bible he goes much further than anyone else working at that time thanks to his engravings over the years Rembrandt gained an international reputation some of his etchings were undisputed masterpieces like this one called the three trees all this the same as 100 Gilda print these were works that could be seen everywhere all over Europe and they drew admiration from all who saw them and so people started asking who is this man who is this engraver and then what sort of a painter is he behind the engraver his contemporaries discovered a great painter his distinctive trademark was his use of a marked contrast between light and shade this technique invented in Italy is known as chiaroscuro and we can see it employed in many of Rembrandt's paintings but Rembrandt first discovered chiaroscuro in the work of a German painter an artist who played a major role in his career was Adam else heimer it was a painter and engraver he'd been in Rome at the same time as Caravaggio and his reputation at that time was almost as good Alzheimer is probably the artist on whom Rembrandt modeled his very intense shadow scooter with strong contrast between foreground and background he had an ambitious use of color because basically chiaroscuro is the use of color as a tool to create expressive images Rembrandt's aim was to stand out from his fellow artists thanks to his studies at the Latin School he had in-depth knowledge of religious texts and when he painted stories from the Bible he knew which scenes would have the strongest emotional charge Michael Rembrandt understood that he must choose the most important the most striking moment of the story in the pilgrims at Emmaus one of the first paintings in which he used chiaroscuro whilst other painters had depicted the moment when Christ breaks the bread he chose the moment when Jesus disappears before the pilgrims eyes or memoria pita her the cool volcanic acidic list when the pilgrims realized that it was Christ there before them he vanished out of their sight as it says in the text Rembrandt said to himself how can I represent the disappearance of a body since as a painter I can only show what is visible he found a daring an ingenious solution which was to represent Christ shadow to him shadows were a kind of halfway house between presence and absence and so all the focus is placed on the spectators the two pilgrims who are amazed to see Christ before them and then again to see him disappear Lucas Nevada Jesus Christ has no face Christ is a silhouette like the commander of the faith so what happens the silhouette is projected against a little yellow wall which demands our attention even more than Christ's silhouette there is something really very modern like a filmmaker who focuses on a character who suddenly appears and grabs our attention Chevonne varios Rembrandt really wanted to remain faithful to his sources and he took great interest in people's facial expressions we know in fact thanks to the few letters which have been handed down that this was something which was very important to him in one of his letters he explains that what interests him is emotion the emotions of the people he is representing Rembrandt placed himself clearly on the side of humanity and human feelings it is not the Christ who takes center stage in this painting for this man whose fear seems to speak directly to us level of unity guess there's a desire for the painting to be effective to be striking and memorable and the young artist at that time wants people to remember his name in his work but there's also a kind of sincerity in the way he practices his art he wants to make an impact on the people looking at his painting and awaken their emotions to there is no doubt that Rembrandt was painting for people and what his art depicted was people's humanity in that sense he was looking forward to the Enlightenment age in which man became the center of the world the era of the encyclopedist s-- philosophers for whom man was an autonomous thinking being his way of humanizing the divine is very modern it's a kind of modernity that begins historically with the Age of Enlightenment which aims to find a human transcendence to take the place of divine transcendence Laplace sundancetv [Music] by the time he was 24 Rembrandt's reputation was growing members of the middle classes and public figures were buying his paintings and soon his fame went beyond Leyden what really enabled Rembrandt's career to take off was that he had a visit from a VIP from Amsterdam it quickly became known that this young painter had a remarkable talent and then the Secretary to the head of state of this newly formed state of the Dutch Republic this statesman comes to visit the painter studio he is extremely impressed and gives Rembrandt his first Commission for a diplomatic gift Constantin Huygens was an intellectual poet and art lover and one of the most influential people in Holland in his diary he wrote that Rembrandt to whom he referred as the young smooth chind Miller made paintings that were comparable to anything that had been created since antiquity and placed him on an equal footing with the greatest painters of the day Joseph but this was a small country in which news circulated very quickly and so straight away in the city of Amsterdam which was a center of great wealth this had an immediate impact media [Music] Rembrandt had just turned 25 an important Commission was about to change his life forever and make him the most popular painter in Holland it was the year 16 31 and the Dutch capital had more than 100,000 inhabitants the city's wealth it's trading activity and also its intellectual and artistic life was expanding daily conscious of his growing fame Rembrandt knew that in order to fulfill his destiny he had to be in Amsterdam going to Amsterdam was a bit like going to Paris for a 19th century painter it was going to the capital for Rembrandt it was another opportunity to know forward I think he'd exhausted the possibilities of the art scene in Layton and he wanted to move up a level by going to the big city Wade win more commissions and indeed he quickly garnered interest from a great many new customers [Music] in Amsterdam he teamed up with an art dealer who had dealings with the whole of Europe as a result he won his biggest Commission to date a life-sized representation of an anatomy lesson carried out by dr. Nicholas too a noted certain doctor tulké was also an important local figure who had been mayor of Amsterdam the painting was to be put on display to mark an important event a dissection which the doctor was to carry out in public the following year it's a portrait of the Gil a group portrait which was to hang in the board room of Amsterdam's Guild of Surgeons it was a way of celebrating one of the physicians one of the eminent members of the surgeons guild and it was also a means of glorifying the profession for Rembrandt the anatomy lesson was a decisive test if the painting was accepted and admired he would go on to an outstandingly successful career if not he might be on his way back to Leyden over the past 100 years a number of group portraits and guild portraits had been painted in Holland like this one by Peter Peters Rembrandt knew that his work would be compared to them but in these paintings despite the efforts made at composition the Tikas remains somewhat wooden in stiff rigid positions Rembrandt however was to make good use of his talent for setting the scene in a studio lent to him by his art dealer associate he got down to work Rembrandt was much talked about in Amsterdam and a number of public figures would regularly drop into his studio to watch him work one by one he painted each of the figures in the painting it's a group portrait in which we recognize each of the figures but it's also a scene from life it's a representation of a dissection during which tope shows the workings of the muscles and nerves in the arm of a dead man here again Rembrandt innovates by transforming the group portrait which at that time was often a sort of amalgamation of a number of personalities into a real scene from life he displays his own taste for action the narrative because these are portraits made in a context and the context is the professional world of these magnetism the gamble paid off when the anatomy lesson of dr. Nicholas topes put on display it's a success here again Rembrandt's strength is in the feeling he gives us a feeling of proximity we are literally witnessing this anatomy lesson the painting brought Rembrandt immediate acclaim during the same period he met his art dealers young nice and engraved her portrait her name was Saskia she was 20 years old and she was the wealthy heiress of the mayor of a neighboring town Rembrandt immediately fell in love he was only 26 years old and his success had given him wings he courted Saskia and married her on July 22nd 1634 she became his favorite model and he never tired of representing her whether in paintings or engravings above all she became his muse and thanks to his new wife Rembrandt discovered a new kind of flesh the female figures in his paintings began to exude an extraordinary sensuality the Hong called this meeting with the niece of his art dealer and protector in Amsterdam was decisive he married Saskia with whom he obviously had an extraordinary love affair but this marriage also revealed him to be highly ambitious marrying Saskia took him into an entirely new social class the merchant class it gave him social status because a single man did not have the same standing as a married man he also benefited from the money or at least some of it belonging to her family so he acquired a whole series of new social markers which made him not only an important painter but a member of Amsterdam's respectable society it was farewell to the son of a pretty bourgeois Miller from the provinces in just a few years Rembrandt had achieved his goal he had become a great painter who rubbed shoulders with the city's most important people in order to show this to the outside world in his self-portraits of this period he dressed like a prince [Music] henceforth equal to masters such as Raphael or Titian his signature was now simply his first name Rembrandt the most powerful man in Holland the Prince of Orange commissioned him to paint a series of pictures on Christ's passion which he also made engravings the English ambassador was another customer all the most important people now wanted their portrait painted by the one they called the talented young mr. Rembrandt Rembrandt began a career as a portrait painter as all of these people desired by means of a portrait to elevate themselves to the rank of the European aristocracy amongst the bourgeoisie who were dominant in the city there was a great vogue for having their portrait painted a great desire to surround themselves with culture to acquire paintings it was a highly visual culture at that time Rembrandt therefore did everything possible to satisfy these members of the middle classes Allah completato he quickly understood what was required in the 17th century a portrait essentially had to fulfill two functions first it had to be a good physical likeness but it also had to represent the sitter's character in other words the person's situation within their social and professional sphere basically a portrait of a member of the middle classes had to show not only the person's body but also the idea that this person had of themselves and the idea that society had about the person to be nicholas urfe era support for staying faithful to the city's own idea of themselves complying with the social conventions that must be respected in the portrait Rembrandt used all of his talent to satisfy these demands [Music] Rembrandt's portraits of this early period were extraordinarily meticulous there wasn't one detail missing the jewels the lace are shown with extraordinary precision ordinaire in just a few years Rembrandt had become a master at rendering fabric and ornamentation and when he painted major public figures his skill at scene setting again worked wonders gossip affair in this portrait of Johann Ayrton bohat Rembrandt succeeds by using a few choice elements in constructing the city's identity in this particular portrait the composition creates a dialogue between the large book in the background and the figure of art and Bach art himself in other words he shows us that the open book art is a man of letters a scholar someone who studies texts and reflects on them so Rembrandt has a way of choosing a small number of clues which he puts into play in order to create the Citiz identity but where he surpassed all of his contemporaries was in the way he revealed the sitter's character in fact he was one of the few Dutch painters of the period to succeed in that feat like any other the primary quality of his work is the feeling that it's true to life in a portrait this truthful quality is created above all by what we call flesh effects the rendering of flesh tones for the lifelike and Rembrandt is a master at it his color technique the way he binds the different layers of color together enables him to create such convincing flesh tones that it's as if the painting is alive and breathing under the surface of the paint this is how bream brandt gives both body and presence to the people he represents in these portraits you really meet someone it's not just oh that's what he or she looked like at that moment no it's a real encounter with a human being for Rembrandt did not lie he aimed to tell the truth about these bodies and faces no other painter of the time paid such attention to detail the salt and pepper of the beard the little red veins on the nose the lines visible around the eyes Rembrandt examined it all with uncompromising honesty and humanity as a result he succeeded in a facing the vanity of his subjects whilst retaining a feeling of their vitality and strength [Music] and what is most striking is that each subject seems to have been caught at a precise moment in 1635 Rembrandt was 29 years old he was Amsterdam's most fashionable painter and for his own amusement he portrayed himself in extravagant garments every month he received commissions for two paintings and several engravings customer demand was so high that he had to take on new pupils Leviton voice at that point Rembrandt's life was really busy so much so that he needed assistance which basically he got from his apprentices he had young pupils who not only learned to paint alongside him to become a little Rembrandt's but also to execute paintings which Rembrandt would sell under his own name everything that was produced in his studio belonged to him but Rembrandt proved to be an excellent teacher and encouraged each of his apprentices to develop their own talents Oh nibble for Rembrandt was not a theorist he wasn't one for dogmas and doctrines he was not an academic we've come to understand that Rembrandt at that time was quite a liberal teacher of course he required his young apprentices to imitate his style because that's what enabled him to sell the paintings done by his assistants under his own name but it seems that he also emphasized his pupils but to become a real painter you must develop your own way of painting in fourth Acadias a poplar mania with regular sales of paintings and income from pupils in return for the Masters teaching Rembrandt was earning a lot of money but all that money was used for one thing to buy exotic objects and accessories for use in his portraits [Music] suits of armor Lance's antique busts butterflies shells coral [Music] his workshop was overflowing with treasures but above all Rembrandt bought paintings by great masters such as Van Eyck and Giorgio nee and prints by bridle and cranek each of which cost a fortune began an extraordinary collection of prints thanks to which he could study the works of Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo Caravaggio and so on he had works by all the major painters thanks to engravings it was above all an artist's collection he bought prints and paintings to use them in his own work there are numerous examples of this kind where he used and recycled certain performers and certain models all of these work served his own painting the perfection of his art enabling him to do better and better gathered together a collection which has been estimated at 7,000 engravings in different albums so that all the great masters whose work was available as engravings were collected by Rembrandt it's a collection it bahama the years 1639 Rembrandt was 33 years old and at the height of his success his rented house was too small so he borrowed money to buy a new studio this purchase marked the beginning of all his troubles electric wired a magnificent house in the Jewish quarter which was obviously beyond his means because he was unable to pay cash he remained in debt to the former owner for about half the purchase price and this was a debt he had great difficulty in paying off [Music] 16:40 was a year of tragedy for Rembrandt his daughter Cornelia was born in July and died two weeks later his own mother Nikken died in September [Music] but at the year-end there came a new opportunity for Rembrandt to shine he received a commission for what was called a Dueling stick another group portrait but it was not just anyone it was Captain France banning who commissioned him to make this extremely large work it was the captain who would pay the largest part of the fee but each of those represented in the painting was also to pay his share Rembrandt's commission was to make a portrait of one of the city's militias at that time paintings of militias looked like this the officers we can imagine them spending hours posing for the painter were distributed about the canvas with minimal concern for setting the scene Rembrandt was to devote the whole of the year's 1641 to producing his greatest masterpiece the Night Watch [Music] for this new group portrait Rembrandt went even further than he had in his painting of the doctor tulips anatomy lesson he chose to portray the militia in action each detail suggests to the people in the painting are in movement it's a history painting it's a particular moment a narrative it's the moment at which the militia are setting off for a procession through the town it's the moment when the captain says forward march it's there for a painting which tells a story in terms of its composition it's a narrative in which the overall picture is more important than the details he couldn't be satisfied with painting like everyone else it's lively there are things going on there's a sense of confusion it's tremendous [Music] but for his patrons Rembrandt had gone too far they were disappointed for they had no wish to appear like mere bit players chicken it's a painting which is extraordinary in terms of its force and its rendering of light but it totally fails to meet the customers expectations they wanted to be seen in their full glory their strength and with the symbols of their wealth but that's not what they got at all they seemed to be on the move for some strange expedition we don't know where they've been or where they're going to and what's more they have with them some stowaways as you might call them a little boy running a dog which seems to be barking at a drum what's it about what's going on do you kiss keys pass [Music] on twisty amsterdam bourgeoisie who until then had complete confidence in him because he'd glorified them all of a sudden started to keep their distance they started to drift away [Music] Rembrandt knew he'd let his customers down and gradually other clients started to go elsewhere that same year another tragedy turned his life upside down his wife Saskia had never fully recovered from the birth of their son Titus after months of illness during which Rembrandt watched her fade away she died in 1642 Rembrandt was 36 he was changed by the deaths of those closest to him and since his customers were deserting him he decided he would no longer make concessions he would prioritize his own freedom as a painter we can see this great freedom in the fact that the client became totally secondary he was no longer seeking to please with Rembrandt the artist has no one to answer to but himself not to God not to other men only to himself creativity is a matter for oneself alone Rembrandt no longer sought to paint a true likeness he painted the emotion and the mystery that his sitters evoked for him he devoted himself entirely to representing their internal truths his ambition was to rival God to express to capture the truth of all human beings and of all human situations to have an insight equal to God's insight into the human condition to take care of his son Titus Rembrandt engaged a nurse Goethe before long she was sharing his bed and she became his mistress Commission's were scarce so he painted and engraved for his own pleasure he went for country walks around Amsterdam and brought back landscapes and also some more wry bald scenes he continued to make studies of biblical scenes and only sold work when a customer showed interest this new relationship to his clients established him as an independent artist he was the first to take the risk of working as an independent artist an independent art is modern art so in that sense we can say that Rembrandt is a precursor of modern art this avant-garde attitude did not go down well with his contemporaries his freedom had a price as his customers gradually abandoned him further they no longer approved of his lifestyle compulsive buys in the sale rooms living out of wedlock with his sons nurse [Music] and all this in a country in which the Calvinist middle classes demand a high moral rectitude to crown it all the young maiden tricky ax who'd recently come to work in the household also became his mistress Gere Tia Rembrandt's live-in lover and his child's nurse could not accept this infidelity she sued him for breach of promise but Rembrandt was having none of it Eva's he was quite unforgiving to her because sometime later he accused her in court of leading a dissolute life and he won the case unfortunately for getcher this led to her being locked up in an asylum and she had a rather tragic end as she died in this Asylum a few years later Rembrandt was selling little and he could no longer meet the repayments on his studio in July 1656 he was 50 years old and deeply in debt he narrowly avoided being sent to prison but all of his goods were seized and sold at auction [Music] governess is in a sort of sly vengeance by the Amsterdam bourgeoisie to whom he was no longer paying homage in his work the auction turned out to be extremely disappointing some of his paintings were sold for next to nothing everything disappeared and Rembrandt was obliged to leave that extraordinary house which he never finished paying for and went to live on the Rose engraft where he would live out the rest of his life settled by a canal on the outskirts of Amsterdam with Titus and Endre Kia Rembrandt's childhood landscapes seemed far away he was 56 years old and still painting and in his self-portraits from this period he spoke of loneliness [Music] in 1662 Rembrandt painted his final group Commission the syndics [Music] with this painting Rembrandt delivered his most moving group portrait the maturity of his art is at work here [Music] the fine detail of the earlier portraits has given way here to the truth which he seeks out in each of his sitters his life's quest [Music] to all of these men looking at us like that leaning towards us they touch us they make us ask questions [Music] ductless all of Rembrandt's works are like this at the origins of a mystery an enigma and deciphering them is out of the question we saw speak to all the power of the image provokes in each one of us through our gaze an intensity of emotion which of course is essential how could he not be our contemporary the final years of Rembrandt's life were again marked by the death of those closest to him first and Rukia his faithful companion died of the plague in 1663 might the memory of Indra Kia have inspired the powerful tenderness of the Jewish bride one of his greatest masterpieces [Music] Titus his son died in 1668 and Rembrandt one year later on October the 4th 1669 he was 63 on his death the Millers son had lost his worldly goods but to the world he left an extraordinary body of work you [Music] you

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Length: 52min 25sec (3145 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020