"It was Titus and Hendrickje, the woman he’d initially employed as his maid, who had kept the artist financially afloat after he’d been forced to sell, in 1656, his grand house in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter (now the Rembrandt House Museum). His fine art collection and his exotic antiques – the latter often appearing as props in his paintings – also went to auction. Titus and Hendrickje stepped in to act jointly as his art dealers when Rembrandt was unable to trade under his own name due to prohibitive bankruptcy laws.
So why had the greatest artist of his age, whose death is this year being marked on its 350th anniversary with exhibitions around the world, fallen into poverty?
Conspiracies and clues
A myth has grown around Rembrandt’s apparent fall from favour that was, for many years, connected to The Night Watch. The painting has even inspired conspiracy theories courtesy of film director Peter Greenaway. His 2007 picture Night Watching, and follow-up documentary Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, argue that the painting’s complex iconography reveals a murder plot that leads to members of the civic militia, who it portrays threatening Rembrandt’s life and leading to his ruin."
