Word: saskia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...accompaniment of music and brilliant conversation; his Venuses were meant to grace Olympian festivals. Rembrandt, whose parents saw to it that he got a good Latin-school education, plus a taste of university life, preferred the company of his sturdy Dutch countrymen. He once chose to paint his bride Saskia in the trappings of classic mythology, but the result (opposite), now owned by Leningrad's Hermitage, is basically a plain young Dutch girl, garlanded with field flowers and dressed in the rich, show-off satins and brocades that so delighted Rembrandt at Amsterdam's public auctions...
Beset by adversity, Rembrandt retreated even farther into his Bible, using his son Titus and his Jewish friends as models. Among his favorites was Hendrickjke Stoffels, the simple peasant family maid whom Rembrandt made his mistress after the death of Saskia. His Bathsheba, for which Hendrickjke posed, is ranked as one of the greatest nudes in Western art, not because of her classic beauty (in fact, Hendrickjke was squat and dumpy), but because of the unsparing yet loving eye Rembrandt cast on her flesh, recreating it against the rich fabric background. Result: a study of the quiet inner resignation with...