s of eminent artists,
were carefully finished; the work that raised him to the greatest
notice, in the first instance, is Professor Tulpius giving an Anatomical
Lecture on a dead Body,[1] and is dated 1632. Reynolds, in his Tour
through Flanders, speaking of this picture, says:--"The Professor
Tulpius dissecting a corpse which lies on the table, by Rembrandt. To
avoid making it an object disagreeable to look at, the figure is just
cut at the wrist. There are seven other portraits, coloured like nature
itself; fresh, and highly finished. One of the figures behind has a
paper in his hand, on which are written the names of the rest. Rembrandt
has also added his own name, with the date 1632. The dead body is
perfectly well drawn, (a little foreshortened,) and seems to have been
just washed; nothing can be more truly the colour of dead flesh. The
legs and feet, which are nearest the eye, are in shadow; the principal
light, which is on the body, is by that means preserved of a compact
form; all these figures are dressed in black." He further adds--"Above
stairs is another Rembrandt, of the same kind of subject: Professor
Nieman, standing by a dead body, which is so much foreshortened that the
hands and feet almost touch each other; the dead man lies on his back,
with his feet towards the spectator. There is something sublime in the
character of the head, which reminds one of Michael Angelo; the whole is
finely painted,--the colouring much like Titian."

Simeon in the Temple, in the Museum of the Hague, painted in 1631, is in
his first manner; as are The Salutation, in the Gallery of the Marquis
of Westminster, painted in 1640; and The Woman taken in Adultery, in the
National Gallery, painted in 1644, all on panel, and finished with the
care and minuteness of Gerhard Dow. His most successful career may be
taken from 1630 to 1656. About the year 1645 he married Miss Saskia Van
Uylenburg, by whom he had an only son, named Titus, the inheritor of the
little wealth left after his father's embarrassments, but, though bred
to the arts, inheriting little of his father's genius. In what part of
Amsterdam he resided at this time we have no record, nor is the house
now shown as Rembrandt's, and which was the subject of a mortgage,
sufficiently authenticated to prove its identity; he may have lived in
it, but it could not at any time have been sufficiently capacious to
contain all the effects given in the catalogue extracted from the
reg