Saskia died in 1642, so he hired a widow to look after his young son. They became lovers, broke up, and he lived with his former maid. In 1656 he was made insolvent, and spent the rest of his life in poverty, painting even more wonderfully.
Rembrandt
A master at the age of only 19, he was discovered 4 years later, then moved to Amsterdam where he shot to fame and success. He married Saskia in 1634, and they moved into their own house in a fashionable quarter in 1639.
In 1579, 7 of the more northerly provinces in the Low Countries formed the Dutch Republic. That soon prospered from its international trade, and saw the creation of millions of paintings that changed European art.
The red that lasts hundreds of years without fading, but it’s a highly toxic salt of mercury. Used in European paintings from the Romans to the late 19th century.
The fall of Icarus, Calydonian boar hunt, Philemon and Baucis, the origin of the Horn of Plenty, death of Hercules, Orpheus and Eurydice, death of Hyacinthus, Pygmalion and Galatea, death of Adonis, and of Orpheus.
Used by all the masters from about 1300, including Leonardo da Vinci, Veronese, Rubens and Rembrandt, this pigment was lost in the early 18th century and wasn’t rediscovered until 1940.
He meets and becomes engaged to a young student at his art school, painting a double-portrait after Rembrandt, and a raucous collage of human emotion as Ulysses fights the beggar.
How expression of pain became stereotyped in narrative paintings from Caravaggio to Böcklin, a very early Rembrandt and the anguish of a ewe on the death of her lamb.
Classical Greek and Roman altars, a witches’ altar from a sabbath, the altar to Bel or Baal, a mysterious sacred grove, and a Greek mathematician kidnapped and killed by a Christian mob.
Stairs to fall down, to sit in disgrace, or pose with your sibling? Stairs winding up and defying gravity, bearing ballet dancers, or in a Gothic prison.
The Eclectic Light Company 