[Louvre, Paris
PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
(ABOUT 1652)
In the course of the same year, we hear of the last pupil coming to Rembrandt, Aert de Gelder, whose youthful enthusiasm may have brought some brightness, we may hope, into the life of the poor broken old man. Meanwhile, the echoes of the law courts still rumbled in his ears, for, on December 22nd, Isaac Van Heertsbeeck, who had evidently not complied with the previous order of the Court in 1660, was again commanded to refund the 4200 florins, and again appealed.
Rembrandt had by then so completely dropped out of public ken, that we only get dim and fleeting glimpses of him. In 1664, we hear of him moving to the Lauriergracht, still farther to the south-east, and it is not until affairs draw him from seclusion that we learn more of him, and then only indirectly. We may, perhaps, conclude, however, from the scarcity of his works during these last years, that his eyes, and possibly general health, were getting ever worse.
On January 27th, 1665, van Heertsbeeck's protracted struggle came to an end, and the Grand Council decided that by June 20th the money must be repaid. On June 19th, Rembrandt and Titus appealed to the law to anticipate the coming of age of the latter, so that he might be legally considered of years of discretion before the actual arrival of his twenty-fifth birthday, a request which must have been connected with a foreknowledge of the decision delivered the next day, June 20th, in favour of Louis Crayers. This meant that the rights of Titus to the full amount of his mother's fortune of 20,375 florins were allowed; but only 6952 florins remained, and of this, on November 5th, Titus was authorised to take possession in his own name. It was but a scanty fraction of what he should have had, but it was something, and the little windfall may have had some part in the return of the family to the Rozengracht. Of the next two years we know nothing, except that we learn from a portrait of Jeremias de Decker, a poet who wrote eulogistic verses on the painter, that neither the man nor the artist was entirely neglected. The first sounds that come again to us out of the darkness are those of wedding bells on the occasion of the marriage of Titus with his cousin Magdalena, the daughter of Cornelia van Uylenborch and of Albert van Loo, whose quarrel with Rembrandt years before had clearly been forgotten. The note of merriment was, however, too quickly changed for one of dolour, for ere the year was out Titus was dead, as we learn from the record of his burial in the Westerkerk, on September 4th, 1668.
In March 1669, the widowed Magdalena gave birth to a daughter, and, on the twenty-second of that month, Rembrandt stood by while the only grandchild he was to see was christened Titia. We catch thereafter some murmurs of that business which he so hated, in connection with the settlement of the respective shares which the little Titia and Cornelia were to draw from the remainder of the old association between their respective parents; and then again comes silence, until, from an entry in the Doelboek, the registry of deaths in the Westerkerk, we learn that the long, slow, downward path has ended, where all paths end, in the grave.
"Tuesday, 8 October, 1669, Rembrandt van Rijn, painter, on the Rozengracht, opposite the Doolhof. Leaves two children."
He was buried, at the cost of thirteen florins, at the foot of a staircase leading up to a pulpit on a pillar on the left-hand side as you go up the church; but when, some years back, a coffin, supposed to have been his, was opened, not a trace of his ashes was to be found.
[National Gallery, London