e best Italian
masters. After the sale of his home and all his rare objects he hired a
house on the Rosengracht near the West Church. This house still stands,
and has a shield dated 1652, though the artist did not live there until
1658.

His life here was not lonely or desolate. He had many friends in Amsterdam
who did not forget him. He was near the bastions of the city, and had not
far to go to sketch, as he loved to do, and he was busy with his brush
until 1662, when he did nothing of which we know. In 1666 he executed four
pictures. Among his works of 1667 there is a portrait of himself which is
of great interest. In October, 1668, Rembrandt died after a short illness.
He was buried in the West Church, and his funeral was so simple that its
cost was registered as only fifteen florins.

Rembrandt's pictures are so numerous and so varied in their subjects that
no adequate list or account of them can be given here. And his numerous
engravings are as interesting as his pictures, so that a volume would
scarcely suffice to do him justice; but I will try to tell something of
his style. His management of light was his most striking characteristic.
He generally threw a strong, vivid light upon the central or important
object, whether it was a single figure or a group, and the rest of the
picture was in shadow. This is true of all his works, almost without
exception--portraits, pictures both large and small, and etchings.

Rembrandt loved to paint unusual things. We are apt to think that an
unusual thing is not natural; but if we closely observe nature, especially
the effect of light and shade, we shall find that no imagination could
make pictures more wonderful than the reality we see. Rembrandt had that
keen observation that helped him to seize upon the sharp features--the
strong points in a scene or a person--and then he had the skill to
reproduce these things on his canvas with great truth.

His etchings are much prized. One of the most famous represents Christ
healing the sick, and is called the "Hundred Guilders Print," because that
sum was the price he fixed for it; now a good impression of it is worth
ten times as much. At his death he left about six hundred pictures and
four hundred engravings. His landscapes are his rarest subjects. Most of
these are in private collections, but I have seen one in the Cassel
Gallery; the color of it is bright and glowing--the sky magnificent. In
the foreground there is a bridge, a