Rembrandt Trivia
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49 free Rembrandt trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Rembrandt trivia quiz covers the painter, the printmaker and the man who lived beyond his means. It starts in Leiden with a miller's ninth child who enrolled at university and left for a painter's studio, the shared workshop with Jan Lievens, the statesman who found him court commissions, and the move to Amsterdam that made him the city's most fashionable portraitist. It covers Saskia, the four children of whom only Titus survived, the house on the Breestraat whose mortgage sank him, and the nurse he had committed to a house of correction. From there the questions cover The Night Watch and what it is not, the Anatomy Lesson, the Hundred Guilder Print, Hendrickje's summons before the church, the insolvency and the sale of his collection, the town-hall painting cut down to a quarter, the Medici visitor, the rented grave in the Westerkerk, the added 'd' in his name, the Mughal miniatures he copied, and the modern arguments over which paintings are really his. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Claude Monet and Michelangelo quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Amsterdam museum is home to Rembrandt's The Night Watch?
The Rijksmuseum
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.
Q 02What was the trade of Rembrandt's father?
Miller
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.
Q 03Rembrandt's first teacher, Jacob van Swanenburg, back from years in Naples, specialised in which dramatic subject?
Hell and its fires
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.
Q 04Pieter Lastman, Rembrandt's teacher for six months in Amsterdam, specialised in which kind of picture?
Bible and myth scenes
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.
Q 05Which fellow painter, a former child prodigy, worked side by side with Rembrandt in his home town in the late 1620s?
Jan Lievens
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.
Q 06Which statesman 'discovered' Rembrandt in 1629 and won him commissions from the court in The Hague?
Constantijn Huygens
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.
Q 07In the early 1630s Rembrandt worked in the Amsterdam workshop of which art dealer, a relative of his future wife?
Hendrick van Uylenburgh
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.
Q 08The father of Rembrandt's wife Saskia had been burgomaster of which Frisian city?
Leeuwarden
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.
Q 09The costly house Rembrandt bought in 1639, now a museum, stood in which part of Amsterdam?
The Jewish quarter
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.
Q 10Rembrandt's only seascape was stolen in 1990 from the Gardner Museum in which city?
Boston
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.
Q 11Rembrandt's wife Saskia died in 1642, probably of what?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is the likely cause. In her last months Rembrandt drew her again and again, tired and ill in bed.
Q 12Geertje Dircx, Titus's nurse and Rembrandt's lover, sued him in 1649 for what?
Breach of promise
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.
Q 13Hendrickje Stoffels, who became Rembrandt's partner in 1649, had first come to the house as what?
His maid
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.
Q 21A prince of which ruling Italian family called on the ageing Rembrandt in Amsterdam in 1667?
The Medici
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.
Q 22Where was Rembrandt buried after his death in October 1669?
In a rented grave in the Westerkerk
In a rented grave in the Westerkerk: he had outlived both Hendrickje and his son Titus, who were already buried in that church.
Q 23Rembrandt's daughter Cornelia emigrated as a young bride to which colonial city?
Batavia
Q 14Why did Rembrandt never marry his long-time partner Hendrickje Stoffels?
Saskia's will penalised it
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.
Q 15Which 1654 nude, now in the Louvre, did Rembrandt paint the year Hendrickje was summoned by the church?
Bathsheba at Her Bath
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.
Q 16Rembrandt's 1656 insolvency followed a slump caused by a naval war with which country?
England
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.
Q 17Which Rembrandt nude was badly damaged in a 1985 acid attack at the Hermitage?
Danaë
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.
Q 18What was Rembrandt permitted to keep after his insolvency?
His tools
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.
Q 19After the bankruptcy, Hendrickje and Titus set up what to let Rembrandt keep working?
A dummy art-dealing company
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.
Q 20What became of The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, Rembrandt's giant canvas for Amsterdam's town hall?
It was rejected and cut down
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.
Batavia, today's Jakarta, became her home: she married a painter in 1670, sailed east with him, and there twice named a son Rembrandt.
Q 24The Man with the Golden Helmet, once a prized Rembrandt, was reassigned to a follower in which city?
Berlin
Berlin's museum made one of hundreds of such demotions: experts who once counted over 600 Rembrandt paintings have since accepted nearer 300.
Q 25In portrait photography, 'Rembrandt lighting' leaves which small shape of light on the cheek furthest from the lamp?
A triangle
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.
Q 26Rembrandt's dramatic use of light and shadow derives from which Italian painter?
Caravaggio
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.
Q 27Which doctor gives the anatomy lesson in Rembrandt's famous 1632 group portrait of Amsterdam's surgeons?
Nicolaes Tulp
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.
Q 28The big, violent canvases of Rembrandt's 1630s, such as The Blinding of Samson, were his bid to match which Flemish master?
Peter Paul Rubens
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.
Q 29What is the formal title of The Night Watch?
The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq
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.
Q 30Why does The Night Watch look like a night scene?
Its darkness is the result of ageing
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.