Artist-biographies: Rembrandt Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Saskia, Rembrandt's Bride. ? Her Manifold Portraits. ? Tobias. ? Works of 1634-36. ? Manasseh Ben-Israel. ? The Van Ryn Family at Leyden. Vosmaer likens the history of Rembrandt's life to one of his pictures, ? full of vague shadows in the background, but lighted up from time to time by luminous figures. The brightest of these was Saskia van Ulenburgh, who afterwards became the light of the artist's household, and the fountain of all his domestic joys. Her father was the jurisconsult, Rombertus Ulenburgh, burgomaster of Leeuwarden, and envoy to the court of William of Orange, a friend of the taciturn prince, and one of the foremost men of Friesland. He had three sons and six daughters, whereof two of the first became barristers, and one entered the army. Five of the daughters were well married, their husbands being Professor Maccovius, Secretary van Loo, Commissary Copal, Doede Ockama, and Wybrand de Geest. The lastA FAIR ORPHAN. 49 named, who married Hendrikje Ulenburgh, was "endowed with the graces of Minerva and of Apelles," and, while studying in Rome, had been entitled "The Frisian Eagle." He had acquired great wealth and renown in Friesland, by his excellent portrait-painting; and was thus able to ally himself with one of its most aristocratic families. In 1624 Rombertus Ulenburgh died; and his youngest daughter Saskia, then but twelve years old, was left to make a home with one of her sisters, or perhaps with her aunt and namesake, who lived at Garyp. Her cousin Aaltje had married Sylvius, a Frisian minister, who moved to Amsterdam in 1610; another cousin, Hendrick, was an art- merchant at Amsterdam ; and a younger Rombertus Ulenburgh had settled in the same city as an historical painter. There is nothing strange in the fact that the members of t...Read More