Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

• Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art (including bidding up his own work), prints and rarities, which probably caused a court arrangement to avoid his bankruptcy in 1656, by selling most of his paintings and large collection of antiquities.
• The sale list survives : Old Master paintings and drawings, included busts of the Roman Emperors, suits of Japanese armor among many objects from Asia, and collections of natural history and minerals.
• But the prices realized in the sales in 1657 and 1658 were disappointing.
• Rembrandt was forced to sell his house and his printing-press and move to more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht in 1660.
• The authorities and his creditors were generally accommodating to him, except for the Amsterdam painters' guild, which introduced a new rule that no one in Rembrandt's circumstances could trade as a painter.
• To get around this, Hendrickje and Titus set up a dummy corporation as art dealers in 1660, with Rembrandt as an employee.
• The displayed painting is a crop from The Abduction of Ganymede, 1635.
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