49 Fun Facts About Rembrandt

Which Amsterdam museum is home to Rembrandt's The Night Watch?

The Rijksmuseum has kept the painting on show even while restoring it: since 2019 conservators have worked on the canvas inside a glass chamber in the gallery, streamed live online.

What was the trade of Rembrandt's father?

Miller was an unusual start: unlike most painters of his day he had no artists or craftsmen in the family, yet the business paid well enough to send him to Latin school.

Rembrandt's first teacher, Jacob van Swanenburg, back from years in Naples, specialised in which dramatic subject?

Hell and its fires meant painting flames and their glow on everything around them, and that early training may lie behind Rembrandt's lifelong fascination with light.

Pieter Lastman, Rembrandt's teacher for six months in Amsterdam, specialised in which kind of picture?

Bible and myth scenes, then called history painting, ranked above every other subject, and Rembrandt's first known works are small stories that rework his teacher's own compositions.

Which fellow painter, a former child prodigy, worked side by side with Rembrandt in his home town in the late 1620s?

Jan Lievens was a year younger, yet he was already a working artist when Rembrandt chose the trade; the pair grew so close in style that experts still argue over who painted what.

Which statesman 'discovered' Rembrandt in 1629 and won him commissions from the court in The Hague?

Constantijn Huygens, secretary to the Prince of Orange, saw the painting Judas Repentant in the young man's studio and wrote admiringly of its storytelling; the court's Passion series followed.

In the early 1630s Rembrandt worked in the Amsterdam workshop of which art dealer, a relative of his future wife?

Hendrick van Uylenburgh sold portraits, copies and restorations from a large workshop; with Rembrandt probably at its head it soon captured the city's portrait market, and in 1634 he married into the family.

The father of Rembrandt's wife Saskia had been burgomaster of which Frisian city?

Leeuwarden was her birthplace. Orphaned by the age of twelve, she married Rembrandt in a Frisian village church in 1634, apparently without any of his relatives there.

The costly house Rembrandt bought in 1639, now a museum, stood in which part of Amsterdam?

The Jewish quarter: he paid 13,000 guilders, largely on credit, for a house on what is now the Jodenbreestraat, and his failure to clear that debt helped to ruin him.

Rembrandt's only seascape was stolen in 1990 from the Gardner Museum in which city?

Boston's museum lost 13 works that night to two men dressed as police officers. The Storm on the Sea of Galilee was cut from its frame, and the museum hung the empty frame back in its place.

Rembrandt's wife Saskia died in 1642, probably of what?

Tuberculosis is the likely cause. In her last months Rembrandt drew her again and again, tired and ill in bed.

Geertje Dircx, Titus's nurse and Rembrandt's lover, sued him in 1649 for what?

Breach of promise was her charge: she said he had sworn to marry her. After she pawned jewellery from Saskia's estate, Rembrandt had her shut in a house of correction at Gouda for five years.

Hendrickje Stoffels, who became Rembrandt's partner in 1649, had first come to the house as what?

His maid at first: Hendrickje took over the housekeeping in 1649, then lived with him as his common-law wife until her death in 1663 and bore him a daughter.

Why did Rembrandt never marry his long-time partner Hendrickje Stoffels?

Saskia's will penalised it: remarrying would have cut off his access to her legacy, held in trust for their son, so the couple stayed unwed even after their daughter was born in 1654.

Which 1654 nude, now in the Louvre, did Rembrandt paint the year Hendrickje was summoned by the church?

Bathsheba at Her Bath breaks with habit: earlier painters showed King David spying on her from afar, but Rembrandt closes in on the woman herself, lost in thought over the king's letter.

Rembrandt's 1656 insolvency followed a slump caused by a naval war with which country?

England's sea war of 1652 to 1654 battered Dutch trade, and many firms and artists failed in its wake; Rembrandt, who had never paid off his house, was one of them.

Which Rembrandt nude was badly damaged in a 1985 acid attack at the Hermitage?

Danaë was slashed with a knife and doused with sulphuric acid by a visitor; the museum's restorers needed twelve years before she could go back on show in 1997.

What was Rembrandt permitted to keep after his insolvency?

His tools were spared because creditors had to leave a debtor the means to earn his keep: no easels, palettes or brushes appear in the inventory, though the house and the collection went to auction.

After the bankruptcy, Hendrickje and Titus set up what to let Rembrandt keep working?

A dummy art-dealing company, set up by contract in 1660, made Rembrandt the employee of his partner and his son: they gave him board and lodging, and his creditors could not claim what he painted.

What became of The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, Rembrandt's giant canvas for Amsterdam's town hall?

It was rejected and cut down: his largest painting hung in the town hall only briefly before being sent back, and it was then trimmed, possibly by Rembrandt himself, to the fragment now in Stockholm.

A prince of which ruling Italian family called on the ageing Rembrandt in Amsterdam in 1667?

The Medici heir, the future Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany, was touring Dutch studios, and his travel journal calls the bankrupt old man 'pittore famoso', a famous painter.

Where was Rembrandt buried after his death in October 1669?

In a rented grave in the Westerkerk: he had outlived both Hendrickje and his son Titus, who were already buried in that church.

Rembrandt's daughter Cornelia emigrated as a young bride to which colonial city?

Batavia, today's Jakarta, became her home: she married a painter in 1670, sailed east with him, and there twice named a son Rembrandt.

The Man with the Golden Helmet, once a prized Rembrandt, was reassigned to a follower in which city?

Berlin's museum made one of hundreds of such demotions: experts who once counted over 600 Rembrandt paintings have since accepted nearer 300.

In portrait photography, 'Rembrandt lighting' leaves which small shape of light on the cheek furthest from the lamp?

A triangle of light under the eye, on the shadowed side of the face, is the hallmark. The term caught on in 1910s Hollywood, where Cecil B. DeMille's studio used it to sell its moody, low-lit films.

Rembrandt's dramatic use of light and shadow derives from which Italian painter?

Caravaggio reached him only second-hand: Rembrandt never once left the Dutch Republic, and picked up the Italian's dramatic contrasts from countrymen who had studied in Italy.

Which doctor gives the anatomy lesson in Rembrandt's famous 1632 group portrait of Amsterdam's surgeons?

Nicolaes Tulp was the surgeons' guild lecturer in anatomy, allowed just one public dissection a year, always on the body of an executed criminal; he later served as mayor of Amsterdam.

The big, violent canvases of Rembrandt's 1630s, such as The Blinding of Samson, were his bid to match which Flemish master?

Peter Paul Rubens was the yardstick: Rembrandt took a print of his Descent from the Cross and remade it as a rawer, more realistic scene, then moved on to life-size dramas of his own.

What is the formal title of The Night Watch?

The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq was commissioned by the captain and his fellow guardsmen, yet only 18 of its 34 figures are real militiamen; their names were later added on a shield.

Why does The Night Watch look like a night scene?

Its darkness is the result of ageing: coats of varnish dimmed over the centuries, and when they were stripped away in the 1940s the scene turned out to be set in broad daylight.

In 2021 curators used what to recreate the strips cut from The Night Watch in 1715?

Artificial intelligence did the work: a neural network studied a small 17th-century copy made before the trimming, then rebuilt the lost edges in Rembrandt's own manner.

How did Rembrandt's etching known as the Hundred Guilder Print get its name?

From its reported price: within a few years of its making, a letter claimed that copies of the print, Christ Healing the Sick, had sold in Holland for a hundred guilders and more.

Rembrandt painted his young wife Saskia more than once in the guise of which Roman goddess?

Flora, goddess of spring and flowers, was her part in 1634, the year they married, and again a year later; she died at 29, so the goddess of spring never reached the summer of her own life.

On what unusual imported material did Rembrandt often print his mature etchings?

Japanese paper, with its warm tone, was one of several surfaces he printed on: he tried different papers, and vellum too, to see how each changed the image.

Some 23 surviving Rembrandt drawings of the 1650s copy miniatures from which Asian court tradition?

Mughal miniatures were probably among the curiosities he collected: his 1656 inventory lists an album of 'curious miniature drawings', and he copied emperors such as Shah Jahan without ever leaving Holland.

What did Rembrandt add to his signature in 1633 that he then kept for life?

The letter 'd' turned Rembrant into Rembrandt early in 1633, a year after he began signing with his first name alone, perhaps to rank himself with Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael.

Which later Dutch painter, like Rembrandt, signed his canvases with his first name alone?

Vincent van Gogh told his brother to list him simply as Vincent, 'the way I sign it on the canvases', because people in France could not pronounce his surname.

Which Rembrandt group portrait is reproduced on boxes of Dutch Masters cigars, sold in America since 1912?

The Sampling Officials, also known as the Syndics of the Drapers' Guild, shows five sober cloth inspectors and their servant, who ended up as the face of an American cigar brand.

Rembrandt's etchings were printed from thin plates of which metal, dozens of which still survive?

Copper plates outlived him: later owners went on printing from them, re-cutting the worn lines, for some two centuries, and 79 of the originals were still known in 1986.

The Polish Rider, whose Rembrandt attribution was once questioned, hangs in which museum?

The Frick Collection, New York, never changed its label when a Rembrandt scholar suggested in 1984 that a pupil had painted the picture, and that doubt is now generally rejected.

Which museum paid a record $2.3 million in 1961 for Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art paid what was then the highest price ever given for a picture. Its first owner, a Sicilian nobleman, had ordered a Rembrandt without even naming a subject.

Which toxic arsenic yellow pigment was found in the sleeve of The Jewish Bride's groom?

Orpiment, in a man-made form, turned up when scientists scanned the painting with X-rays in 2013; until then nobody had found this arsenic yellow anywhere in Rembrandt's work.

Which future court painter in London trained in Amsterdam under Rembrandt's pupil Ferdinand Bol?

Godfrey Kneller, born Gottfried Kniller in Germany, had been sent to university to study mathematics, but drawing won; he went on to paint monarchs from Charles II to George I.

Which painting in the Hermitage, finished in Rembrandt's final years, is among his last great works?

The Return of the Prodigal Son closes a circle: some thirty years earlier he had painted a carousing prodigal, generally taken to be himself, with Saskia on his knee.

The mysterious writing on the wall in Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast is painted in which alphabet?

Hebrew letters run down the wall in columns instead of across it, a layout Rembrandt took from his friend, the scholar Menasseh ben Israel, who argued that this was why Babylon's wise men could not read them.

What does the 'van Rijn' in Rembrandt's name indicate about his family?

They lived near the Rhine, yet he hardly ever signed with the name: 'van Rijn' joined his monogram only in 1632, and within a year he was signing with his first name alone.

Which pupil of Rembrandt painted The Goldfinch in 1654?

Carel Fabritius died that same year, aged 32, when Delft's gunpowder store blew up; many of his paintings are thought to have gone with him, which makes the little bird a rare survivor.

What did the 'L' most likely stand for in the 'RHL' monogram on Rembrandt's early work?

Leiden, or Leidensis in Latin, tagged him as a man of his home town; once he had made his name in Amsterdam he dropped the monogram and signed simply with his first name.

A vast impact basin named Rembrandt was discovered by a NASA probe in 2008 on which world?

Mercury's craters are named after artists, writers and composers, and Rembrandt drew one of the biggest: the basin is more than 700 km across, second on the planet only to Caloris.