e-painter
Roghman and the rich marine painter-amateur Van de Cappelle, perhaps also
Asselyn, are about the only ones who seem to have been in close relation
with the master. Of his pupils the most promising ones, Bol and Flinck,
rapidly estranged from their master both socially and artistically,--others
like Maes, de Gelder, and Hoogstraten returned to their native town
Dordrecht. Only Van den Eeckhout and Philips Koninck appear to have
remained on intimate terms with Rembrandt. To his artist-friends we may
here add the calligrapher Lieven Coppenol, whose fine etched portraits by
Rembrandt the reader will remember, and very likely, too, the celebrated
silversmith _Lutma_, a man of a very personal talent.

After what was said of the town's and its burghers' outward appearance, we
would do well to devote another moment's attention to what we called the
town's soul and observe more closely the intellectual life of Amsterdam,
thus facilitating a more general understanding of the period.

At the time when Rembrandt established himself in Amsterdam, a great
improvement had taken place in its religious conditions. Ever since 1578
the town had [Plate 27. Portrait Of Jan Lutma. ]

Plate 27. Portrait Of Jan Lutma. From an impression, in the First State,
of Rembrandt's etching, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

been exclusively Protestant, but internal dissensions had succeeded the
abolition of the Roman Catholic Church, and in the beginning of the
seventeenth century had resulted in intense factional feeling. Towards
1630 this storm had subsided and the magistrates, although themselves
clinging to the Reformed Protestant Church, did not further molest other
sects, such as the Remonstrants, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Walloons, who
were permitted to build their own churches. The Catholics also were again
able to fulfill their religious duties on condition that they avoided
ostentation. The Jews officiated in their own Synagogues and nowhere
enjoyed greater liberty than in Amsterdam.(5) The royal road of religious
tolerance, rare in those days, was more and more deliberately taken, and
it sounds well to hear how in 1660 Governor Stuyvesant, of New-Amsterdam
(New York), receives from his directors in Amsterdam the following
admonition to be less rigorous against other sects: "Let everybody remain
unmolested as long as he behaves modestly and peacefully, as long as he
does damage to nobody and does not