In 2008, I became one of the directors of the Rijksmuseum
and I suddenly thought, wouldn't it be amazing if every child
who lives in the Netherlands, whatever their background is,
could visit the Rijksmuseum and see The Night Watch?
My eye and my beret.
That was enough by then for anyone to know that it was me.
A famous painter.
His more famous hat.
But after this, it all went wrong.
Here was a picture about the pride of my city,
and in the years after I painted it,
my face and name were dragged in the mud.
Rembrandt - the adulterer.
Father of a bastard child.
The great painter who lost all his money.
So this is the time when he was doing his magnum opus
The Night Watch,
but it was also a very tragic period because his wife Saskia...
..I do believe they had a really good relationship.
Titus - their son - has only just been born
and she was dying, actually, at the time he was doing The Night Watch...
..and he would have been conscious of her lying there.
So, I don't know, I think that's a tragic aspect
that I brought into my book about Rembrandt.
You see Saskia...
..lying in a bed sweating
and she's obviously fighting against her illness.
Not much later...
..Rembrandt comes to her and he's all enthusiastic.
But Saskia's drifting in and out of feverish delirium.
And he's so enthusiastic to tell her that he's finally finished.
And we see this very happy...
..face of Rembrandt, and you rarely see Rembrandt happy in his book
and he says, "It's ready.
" 'The Company Of Captain Frans Banning Cocq
"And Lieutenant Willem Van Ruytenburgh
"Preparing To March Out' it's called."
Because that's the original title of The Night Watch.
And she starts to laugh, of course.
"You're like a little boy when you get all enthusiastic.
"I wish I could see it though."
He sits down and there's a moment of silence.
And just before she fades away, Saskia says to him, "Where's Titus?"
"Shall I go get him?"
TANNOY: Ladies and gentleman, the museum will close in 15 minutes.
We kindly ask you to make your way to the exits.
We thank you for your visit.
When you work in a museum, in the Rijksmuseum,
you have these moments after closing that you're on your own...
..with the pictures.
The Night Watch, which you know is an icon, actually comes to life.
You step into the scene, and every time I'm amazed again
that it has that power.
Being on your own with it and standing really eye and eye
with real people from the 17th century is an amazing thing.
And that was the highest goal
for 17th century Dutch painters,
to recreate the scene in front of your eyes.
Captain Frans Banning Cocq tells me he wants a likeness of him
and his militia company.
I look at how other artists make these group portraits.
A line of likenesses. All very well, but no energy, no action,
no anything as far as I'm concerned. Why make such a painting?
I won't.
What does Rembrandt do? And that's the amazing thing about Rembrandt,
and that's why I always think he's just a rebel.
There was something in him
that he wanted to do something no-one had tried,
and Rembrandt approaches it, not as a portrait, but as a history scene.
He wanted to recall the great past of the militia,
protecting the city of Amsterdam from the enemy - the Spanish.
Therefore, the slightly old-fashioned dress,
the kind of nearly Divine Light which structures the composition
and this apparent chaos.
These days, the militias are drinking clubs
for the middling sort of citizen.
But when we sought our independence 30, 40 years ago,
it was a different matter.
So I give them back their swagger and their weapons,
their purpose and their pride.
I roll the drums, I march them out.
I give them back their city.
I make the city mine, forever.
Well, there are many mysteries to the painting
but the little girl remains one of those intriguing things.
Who is she?
And people in the past have often seen her as Saskia,
Rembrandt's great love and his wife
who dies at the time of The Night Watch.
And there's been a long time of people saying,
"Well, no, we shouldn't consider that."
But I think when you look at it
and you think of the images we know of Saskia,
this little girl has very similar features.
So intently or not intently, I think he did paint Saskia.
Course I did.
She was the reason I'd done everything.
The reason to be rich, to be good enough for her rich family.
I saved her here from rot and corruption.
The company were delighted with the picture.
They paid me 1,600 guilders for it, the price agreed without a quibble.
I don't know what I did with the money.
I don't know what I'm doing at all.
I hate the nights.
I hate the hours of darkness.
I can't bear her absence, I can't bear the loneliness.
I can't bear the empty bed.
I can't stand that there's no-one to touch.
When Titus wakes and cries...
..the nurse calms him.
Like father...
..like son.
In the months after Saskia's death,
we have evidence that a situation transpires
where Saskia is replaced.
And Geertje Dircx, the dry nurse
whom he had hired to look after Titus,
probably as Saskia was ailing and starting to fade,
he starts an affair with her.
She was a really working class girl
and she must've put him on a pedestal
because he was at the top of his career at that moment.
He was very popular and they have this...
..affair, which is behind closed doors.
He sort of stumbles upon everything.
He's not acting in his life,
he's letting things happen.
At the time, they were of course both widowed.
Geertje was already widowed when she came in his service.
And I think they found a sort of solace in each other's misery.
And she was taking good care of him and of his child.
She already lived in the place,
so it was a comfortable way for him...
..to get over his...
..well, some of his misery in that period of his life.
Do I love Geertje?
I love that she loves the boy.
I love the fact that she's alive, warm when I touch her.
And within these walls, I'm not ashamed of anything we do.
Outside them is another matter.
Here in the...
..Amsterdam City Archives,
we have about three-and-a-half stretching kilometres
of notarial archives.
And hundreds of different notaries.
This is just one of the 25,000 volumes.
And this...
..this is the last will of Saskia.
The terms of Saskia's will
were that half of the estate went to Rembrandt
and half should go to Titus when he came of age,
or if Rembrandt should remarry.
That was a pretty standard stipulation in wills,
because it protected the child from, you know,
the myth of the evil stepmother,
or being cut out of the family legacy at a later point.
I can't marry Geertje.
Even if I wanted to, the will prevents me.
I'd have to sell things to pay Titus his share.
And what would a one-year-old do with 20,000 guilders anyway?
Play with it?
He can have his inheritance when he's 25.
There's plenty of time to make that money.
His production seems to decrease in quantity during the 1640s.
He turns his attention more to landscape,
less on portraiture,
more on history painting.
But the quantity of pictures that we have from him
seems to decline.
That may have well impacted his financial status.
He also, though, has a house to pay off
and didn't make prompt payments on the house.
After completing The Night Watch,
he stops with painting for almost a decade.
He does produce some paintings at this point,
but I think that Rembrandt had an existential crisis at that point
and I think it had to do with the death of Saskia.
He basically wanted to get out of the rat race
and I think that's why he was painting so little at this time.
I think Rembrandt thought...
..you know, "Screw it, I'm going to do what pleases me,
"and only pleases me."
I've had enough of high society.
Enough of wealthy portrait sitters wasting my time.
I teach.
I sketch.
I etch.
Around 1644 or 45,
he was having an affair with Geertje Dircx.
And that's exactly the period that he makes images
with a lot of, well, basically youngsters...
..relating to each other, sometimes more explicit than others,
but there is a lot of, well, let's say erotic tension in the air.
The Omval.
It's obviously a landscape etching from 1645.
It's a very interesting print for a number of reasons.
This came about as a study of a willow tree
and then adds a narrative context.
It's a particular place.
It still exists just outside Amsterdam.
And as part of the narrative, he adds a couple here in the shadow.
And you have to really take your time looking at what's there
and then you realise,
"Oh, my God, there's a couple in the shadow doing...
"..having a good time together."
The Three Trees is by far his most pictorial landscape etching ever,
because you almost think like you're looking at a painting.
It is his most elaborate,
also probably one of his largest landscape etchings that he ever did.
But he does the same thing.
What you see in the bushery around to the small lake,
there is again a couple having a good time together.
And, for me, I know an impression is better than another
if you can hardly see the couple,
because when the plate starts to wear down
they show up ever more clearly.
This one is the most explicit.
It shows a couple in a bed.
Well, a couple having fun.
There has been a lot of effort to attribute this print
to somebody else but it's Rembrandt
in the period that he was having an affair with Geertje Dircx.
And whether you can see that, it's very tempting,
but it is a little bit stretching it, as far as I'm concerned,
to assume that the man then should be Rembrandt
and the woman should be Geertje Dircx.
My own view is that Rembrandt had to represent everything at least once.
That he saw himself as the universal artist.
And so he has lovemaking as part of his repertoire
and he, of course... He depicts it after life.
It's perhaps fair to speculate that he's thinking
or has in mind his own relationship.
So it's fair to see some connection between Rembrandt's own life.
But I wouldn't see that as Rembrandt representing himself.
Everything seems to drift back to what happens in our bedroom
and what our little world will think of it.
I wonder what I dare to do?
I wonder what I think of my own conduct?
What do I wish for?
What can I afford?
I've told my pupils that I think of her as my wife.
I let her wear the jewels that Saskia left behind.
In 1644 Rembrandt's paints...
..a very unusual and elaborate version of this story
from the Old Testament, of Christ and a woman who's brought to him
and accused of adultery.
You see the head scribe saying...
.."Teacher, tell us. This woman was caught in adultery
"and the laws of Moses tell us that she should be stoned to death.
"What do you say?"
And in the story, it's continued that Christ contemplates her
and then starts writing something on the ground, presumably in the sand,
or maybe with a piece of chalk
and then when he gets back up
they see that what he has said in writing is,
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone at her."
As so often with Rembrandt,
I think there was a clear sense
that it has some personal relevance for him.
Which is why he draws out this beautiful idea
of withholding judgment for the time being.
The centrepiece of the composition in the foreground
is the woman herself.
Rembrandt might have used Geertje as the model most readily at hand.
The 17th century was not a time when models were that freely available,
especially female models.
So I think it's entirely plausible
that Geertje Dircx would have been a model for this.
I turn this over and over in my mind.
Are we sinful? Is this wrong?
Have I ruined her? Has she ruined me?
Are we judged?
I find I don't care.
I'm certainly a sinner.
So is she.
And so is everyone on Earth.
I put the gossip behind me and I paint less and less.
The etching plate is where I wish to work.
I've made a new friend.
A patron, really.
Jan Six. A lover of art.
A rising man.
He'll rise beyond me, soon enough.
He commissions a portrait from me
and I leave the paint brush aside and take up the needle.
This is his portrait of Jan Six, his friend, made in 1647.
Jan Six was powerful.
He would become Mayor Of Amsterdam later in his life,
and here he is leaning casually on the windowsill reading a book.
I mean, this is perhaps the most informal way
you could depict somebody...
..in those days.
This is one of the most marvellous etchings Rembrandt ever produced
and certainly one of the most marvellous
in the history of printmaking.
And it was by means of his prints, really,
that he became famous all over Europe.
What he does here is explore the full potential
of what he could do with shadow.
Nobody could do this.
There was only one artist in the world at that time
who could make this kind of tonality, that was Rembrandt.
It's really stunning.
What you would usually do in a portrait is...
There is the person to portray
and you say to the person, "Look at me, please."
And then you start making a portrait.
That's not what's happening here.
It's almost like a snapshot.
We were friends. Not social equals, but friends.
So why be formal?
What's the point of a formal portrait?
Wrapping him and his possessions
in that velvet dimness took me hours.
Everyone who sees a copy asks me how I did it.
And I don't tell them.
Every great artist has his secrets.
So this, now, is a very interesting painting indeed.
We see a woman in bed.
This is not really what you would expect...
..a decent woman in the 17th century...
..to have painted of her, you know?
So this is the first question mark.
And then, of course, the next question is...
..who she can possibly be?
That is linked to the date, and the picture is dated.
Unfortunately the last figure is damaged and basically gone.
So it reads 164-.
Luckily, however, we know from two different sources
that the picture in all likelihood was painted in 1647.
His wife had died five years before.
And in this particular moment, the only woman in his house
would have been Geertje Dircx.
She started as a maid in his household.
And many people have noted that her hands,
actually, are rather...worker's hands.
And, yeah, that would at least fit.
What would not really fit, of course,
is this golden hair dress she's wearing
and also the very ornate and rich bed she's in.
So there is probably more behind this picture.
Geertje Dircx sits for me as Sarah, the would be wife of Tobias
from the Book Of Tobit in the Bible.
A cursed woman.
A demon has killed every man she tried to marry.
And now she watches as Tobias burns the guts of a fish
to drive the demon away.
She hopes his spell will prove successful.
She yearns for marriage.
Just as Geertje Dircx does.
She has been working there
and living in Rembrandt's household for a while
and getting pretty serious with Rembrandt, I guess,
at least from her side.
Because...
..in this last will dated on January...
..the 24th in 1648, she has only a few heirs that she that she mentioned
and the most important one is Titus van Rijn,
which is the stepson-to-be, the son of Rembrandt.
And, yeah, it's quite unusual
that somebody who's not married to the father of the stepson-to-be...
..mentions him already as her heir.
In January 1648, when Geertje Dircx is making her will,
she doesn't have much, but she's leaving her clothing to her mother,
and the rest goes to Titus.
And she explicitly states that she leaves, also, her jewellery,
and her gold and silver objects to Titus.
And this is important,
cos these jewels must have come from Rembrandt,
were given by Rembrandt and had belonged to Saskia.
I wish I hadn't given her the jewels at all. It was going too far.
At the very least, they belong to Saskia's side of the legacy.
They have to go to Titus when he comes of age.
Another miracle.
Probably the most elaborate self-portrait by Rembrandt...
..where he portrays himself just as he would have been clothed
in his workshop...
..sitting by the window...
..studying his face.
Because if there is a self-portrait without any pretence
and without any making faces, then this is it.
And it is a beautiful sequence,
because what you see here is a self-portrait coming into being
and you see it's still imperfect, but the groundwork is there.
And then towards perfection...
..and it's almost photographical,
which, at that time, 1648, was a miracle
because nobody else could do such a thing as this.
Here, still more...
..tone and darkness and mystery.
And then he continued, in an effort to get it even darker,
to get it even murkier.
And to my mind he shouldn't have done that,
because it's too much.
Why did it grow darker?
I think I wanted the face to be the focus.
My 42-year-old face, just as it is.
And why, in my last attempt, did I fill the window with a landscape
I've never lived in?
Houses and a hill, not Amsterdam.
Maybe I should be living another life entirely.
I no longer wish to be with Geertje.
Another maid has entered the house and Rembrandt has fallen in love
with this much younger Hendrickje Stoffels.
There was a big difference between Geertje
and Hendrickje for Rembrandt.
In spring 1649, it's clear that Geertje is leaving the house
and moving to a simple rental house in the neighbourhood.
And then shortly after, she summons Rembrandt
to the commissioners of The Chamber Of Marital Affairs
and she is openly stating that they have slept together
and that he has broken his promise to marry her.
This whole book is full of men trying to get away with it.
People who were promised to be married...
..and one says, "Oh, no, no, no, no.
"On second thought maybe not."
And this has happened with Geertje Dircx as well.
And she says that she slept with him several occasions.
And, yeah, she wants to get married now.
And Rembrandt says...
..well, yeah, of course he denies
that he ever, ever, ever, had serious promises of faith
and marriage and everything. No, no, no, no, no.
And because of that,
he doesn't have to confess that he slept with her.
It's clear that the commissioners of the marriage affairs...
..they believed Geertje.
He has to pay 200 guilders a year...
..during the rest of her life.
And that was quite much. 200 guilders was really much.
However, Geertje turns on this agreement...
..rejects it and storms off.
And this likely precipitates a state of mind where even her family...
..collaborates with Rembrandt to have her committed
to the spinhuis or the House Of Correction.
It ended very badly for Geertje.
She was put in a woman's jail, basically.
And so that whole episode has also coloured our understanding
of Rembrandt as a person
and whether he was a horrible person or a misogynist.
It's very difficult for historians to understand what really happened.
Lots of historians have figured
that Rembrandt was the driving force behind that,
but, actually, in Dutch law,
a question to lock someone up, lock her up...
..had to be made by relatives, by the family.
So we don't have the application,
but we know it must have been made by her brother - Dircx.
But she must have led a low life in some way or another
that merits her being sent to the House Of Correction
and that being approved by the local authorities.
It was not so in Amsterdam society that if you broke up
you could just send your ex-girlfriend
to a House Of Correction.
It's quite easy to see Rembrandt in this whole story
as sort of the evil genius wanting to get rid of a woman.
But I think it was, for him, also much more complicated.
It's tempting to think that Rembrandt was sort of pulling the strings
and arranging her to go to this...
..House Of Correction but there were other people involved also,
and Geertje was, apparently, clearly also a woman
who could become very angry and very untameable.
So...
..we don't know.
I put it behind me.
I put her behind me too.
She would not be helped.
So when her brother asked for my support
in placing her in the spinhuis, I gave it gladly.
There's a reason such places exist.
And then I paint myself in my studio clothes
as a man you can do business with, despite what you've heard.
And I paint in a new less finished style.
Why?
I've been away from painting far too long.
The market's flooded with my own pupils painting as I used to.
And, anyway, it seems truer to the likeness of the person
and the painted self.
The truth is, I've run short of money.
Every day, I expect the man I bought the house from to come knocking.
The date is 11th of January, 1653.
Must have been cold there on The Sint Antoniesbreestraat.
Christoffel Thysz, accompanied by a notary and another witness,
he goes to the house of Rembrandt where Rembrandt is not at home.
And his servant is opening the house and the girl says,
"No, no, he's not at home. But I'll tell him that you have been here."
Rembrandt was supposed to have paid off the house years before
and taken full possession of the deed to the house.
And Christoffel Thysz had been quite patient,
but his patience evidently ran out.
Two days later, the notary and the witness go again
to Rembrandt's house and then he is there.
So Christoffel Thysz says,
"Yeah, it's already lying there for a long time. Blah, blah, blah.
"You even don't pay taxes."
Taxes.
I haven't paid the city taxes on my house for years.
Thysz has been paying them for me and I know what he really wants.
He wants what I still owe for the house.
I mean, the taxes he can maybe afford.
But the sum that he needs for the house,
it's obvious that he doesn't have that money.
He doesn't have it.
He doesn't say so but, I mean, that's what we know.
Christoffel Thysz presented Rembrandt with a bill
showing that he owed still more than 8,000 guilders
out of the 13,000 guilder purchase price on the house.
It was supposed to have been paid off in four or five years
according to the original contract.
Presented with this bill and not wanting to lose the house,
Rembrandt had to scramble. He had to come up with a great deal of cash,
in a very short span of time.
Who can I find to borrow from in this money grubbing city?
I'm sure Jan Six will lend me something. 1,000 guilders maybe.
You can't ask a friend for more. Who else?
Here is Mr Cornelis Witsen.
He was a counsellor and an old elder man of the city.
He is an important man from an important family.
And Rembrandt borrows 4,180 guilders.
Cornelis Witsen very likely imagined that he could get Rembrandt under his wing.
That Rembrandt might be in service to him because of this debt.
Rembrandt says, "OK, I'm going to pay it back within one year,
"and, Cornelis, you can get everything I have if I don't pay."
That's what he says.
Yeah. But it's easy. It's easy to say.
So there are more people who Rembrandt borrowed money from.
And here we have another one.
He borrows 4,200 from Isaac Van Heertsbeeck.
Again, Rembrandt says,
"Yeah, all my goods and my house and all my belongings
"is what you're going to get if I don't pay back."
If we make a calculation and we see that together with Jan Six
it's an amount of 9,000 plus guilders...
..that he borrowed within weeks.
And all on the condition that he had to pay this back in a year.
Yes, it's impossible.
It's more, I think, an idea of,
"Nah, OK. We'll see what the future will bring.
"We'll see how long I can stretch this situation.
"Every day is another day."
Everything I've borrowed rests on the same security.
Everything I possess.
It's probably illegal but what else can I do?
Apart from work.
These date from 1653.
This print, The Crucifixion - or as it's known,
The Three Crosses - is my favourite print
and this is my favourite impression.
It's the first state, so this is how he started out
and he printed it on almost golden vellum.
Almost the size of a small painting
and also the impact of a painting.
But this...
..is such a remarkable project
because he executed his print completely in dry point.
So it's basically scratched into the copper plate.
All the lines have this soft velvety quality
which really adds to the image here.
It has, also, a very important disadvantage
because it wears down fairly quickly.
You can make about 50 impressions and then it's just gone.
This is a large plate. It must have been expensive.
And if you can only make a few impressions, that's a waste.
And he made a brilliant solution.
And it is - he completely reworked the plate.
And that's what you see there.
Everything you see here is there too.
And, for example, it's more grim, dark, and it seems late at night
but you can still see Christ on the cross and a lot of the figures...
..are still the same. But here he added a new figure.
You can see that there are numerous lines all over the image
and those are completely straight,
so he must have had a ruler.
And that's a beautiful image of Rembrandt,
and I picture it at night or in the evening,
just having this plate in front of him and with a ruler,
just shadowing the complete plates in order to get at that,
and that must have taken quite some time.
It was, as far as I'm concerned,
a brilliant solution to a problem that he had
and that would allow him to make 50 more impressions.
And you can imagine that, as a collector, you would want that.
So, in a way, he is thinking economically.
How can I make more impressions of this plate?
But that's only half of the story
because he is also thinking as an artist
and making it into a new picture.
And, in a way, as stunning as the first version,
but completely different.
For these prints, I can charge a guilder at the very most.
Mere drops in my ocean of debt.
I waste my time on them because they're beautiful.
Because they keep my mind at bay, my hands busy.
They make me still.
1653 was a terrible year for Rembrandt.
There is only one painting that is signed and dated to that year,
but it's an extraordinary painting.
It's a painting that was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in the early 1960s at auction.
At that point, it was the most expensive painting in the world.
They paid a record price for it - $2.3 million.
They bought it on a Wednesday
and the first day that they put it on display
in the Metropolitan Museum was that Saturday.
And more than 50,000 people came to see it.
And the day after, more than 70,000 people.
1653 marks a watershed in Rembrandt's...
..financial status.
Rembrandt needed this commission.
The money was extremely important for him.
He was trying to work himself out of a mountain of debt.
He was given this commission by Don Antonio Ruffo...
..for delivery to his palace in Messina, Sicily.
When Ruffo first took possession of the painting,
he did not know or did not acknowledge
that the central figure was indeed Aristotle.
What he understood this to be was a painting of a philosopher.
It's possible, though,
that we've all gotten the subject of Rembrandt's painting wrong
and that Rembrandt might have intended it to represent Apelles,
the greatest of Ancient Greek painters.
We also see that Homer is cited by writers in Rembrandt's sphere
as an inspiration to persevere through difficult times with patrons.
Homer died in poverty, they say.
Perhaps the same fate waits for me.
Money.
Money doesn't matter any more.
It's just a mud I'm stuck in.
A picture for Don Ruffo made me a few hundred guilders,
but I owe 9,000.
But it's all just money.
There's everything to live for.
Although I can't marry Hendrickje
any more than I could have married Geertje.
Because...
..that would cost me money too.
Money I haven't got.
Rembrandt painted this picture
The Woman Bathing In A Stream in 1654.
But there is much more to it
than the title would ever be able to convey.
Not least because the woman depicted, in all likelihood,
is his partner of many years - Hendrickje Stoffels.
There is no official portrait of her.
But this woman features in a number of works throughout this period...
..and although none of them are documented as portraits of Hendrickje,
it seems very likely that it is her.
This is...
..one of the most...
..sensorial and sensitive...
..works Rembrandt ever painted.
And at the same time,
he excels, in his way, to create delicacy...
..with his rough manner.
You can see that he uses the under paint, you know,
which is brownish, streaky, to create structure.
And he creates this illusion of this light white garment she's wearing.
It's just...
..perfect.
The informality in the painting,
which is so enhanced by that extremely vigorous brushwork,
especially in that shift,
which was actually very carefully done,
but it looks like it's done in a fast dash.
It's complemented by this... Not just to this robement,
but also this lovely loosened curl
that twirls around the side of her face,
a very loving detail I think.
Clearly he'd wanted to be with this woman 20 years his junior.
She's hiked up her shirt extremely high,
revealing herself again to a degree that you'd have to say,
this may have been a little bit shocking to people.
Rembrandt may have painted it for himself for all that we know.
I think that while Saskia was the first great love of his life,
Hendrickje really took up a very important role
in his affectionate life in later years.
But there was a bit of trouble with it
because she was considered to be living in sin with him.
I ask her to sit for me a little longer,
entirely naked..
..for a different picture.
I know it isn't comfortable, this unmarried place I've put her in.
I understand the risk she runs
so I paint her as Bathsheba from the Bible at her bath
just after she's received the letter from King David saying he wants her...
..even though she has a husband.
She has read the letter.
She's still holding it.
Her eyes are downcast.
She's clearly not speaking.
She's not saying anything to the quiet attendant.
And she's really lost in very deep thought
and has what we know to be a quandary before her.
She is a married woman.
The question for her,
"Do I become the mistress of King David?",
this powerful king whom she really can't refuse.
It seems almost impossible for me
to think that Rembrandt didn't have Hendrickje in mind
as he painted this subject.
The woman having to think hard about her adulterous relationship
seems very resonant with his own life at this time.
Conflict. Inner conflict.
Any woman who's faced with the prospect
of having an illicit affair.
Wanting it, knowing it's wrong, not wanting it.
What to do?
Yeah, the turmoil of... It's the argument with oneself.
It really is a remarkable feat.
All of a sudden, he gives the floor to her
and tries to think to himself,
"What is it like for her to be in this situation
"and to receive the letter?"
To really see it from her perspective.
Life is about decisions.
I'm very grateful for hers.
I wish I could afford to marry her.
It would save her from the hypocrites and busybodies,
the born agains who are so sure they're good enough for God.
What we've got here is protocol number nine
from the Calvinist church court
and this is a book where they wrote down almost everything
that's concerned them and the members of the church...
..who are not living properly enough
according to the rules and the ideas of the Calvinist reverence.
And one of them is on this page, she's called Hendrickje.
And Hendrickje, she's living on the Breestraat...
..and she, as it said in Dutch...
SPEAKS DUTCH
"She lives as a whore with Rembrandt the painter."
And she confessed.
And the punishment was that, as long as she is living this bad life,
she cannot take part in the Holy Supper.
And it's a clear case, she will be seen as a prostitute.
The thing is...
..you can ask why is it that Hendrickje got this punishment
and why did Rembrandt get no punishment?
Well, there are two parts of the answer.
First...
Rembrandt was not a member of the church.
And on the other hand, very often in these kind of cases,
it's the woman who got cut-off from the Holy Supper
and the man, well, lives on happily ever after.
She acknowledged it.
She acknowledged that she had been a-whoring with Rembrandt,
in the colourful language of the time,
and yet she didn't exactly recant.
They kept on living in sin, so to speak, and moreover,
it becomes evident later, in a year,
why the reformed council was onto this.
She was pregnant and gave birth to their child Cornelia
not long thereafter.
We took her for baptism at The Oude Kirk at the end of October.
It is the third time that a daughter of mine has been baptized
with my mother's name.
God, let her live.
Her mother, too.
I've made Hendrickje in to a very confident, sort of modern...
..almost suffragette lady.
And...
..she's a way better communicator than Rembrandt is.
In this scene, we see a couple who are standing...
..looking at a painting of Rembrandt's,
and they get a little closer to see what's really going on there.
And then you hear somebody barking, almost.
"Not too close! You want to look at it, not smell it."
And that's Rembrandt, of course.
But luckily he's called away because...
.."Mr Six has arrived, sir", and Hendrickje takes over.
Jan Six and Rembrandt had a friendly relation.
I think they were sort of chummy.
And here he is, posing for Rembrandt.
When Rembrandt couldn't repay Jan Six after one year,
we see another transaction happened between them, and that is
that Rembrandt paints the extraordinary portrait of Jan Six.
I find this image so striking...
..that even a transparency takes my breath away.
I do believe that, were this the only work of his...
..one would account him to be one of the greatest painters
in art history.
As he gets older, of course,
Rembrandt's fascination with the ability of paint
to create an impression in and of itself
just by the usage of the paint...
..develops in to the genius that presages Impressionism...
..by centuries.
It is painted with extraordinary brevity.
The latches on his red cloak are just single strokes of paint,
wet into wet.
There is a fantastic bravura in the way that it's painted.
The human element, the interior life that Rembrandt conveys in the face.
The pursing of the lips to indicate a man of wit
with some charm, perhaps with a surfeit of dignity...
..makes this one of the great treasures of western art.
Rembrandt's going price for a portrait of that size
and that character would have been about 500 guilders.
But we don't see any reduction in Rembrandt's debt.
You would think that Jan Six would say,
"Oh, OK. Now you only owe me 500 guilders."
But that's not what happened.
Was the painting a gift?
I think it probably was.
And by giving Jan Six this gift, he was saying, basically,
"I'm sorry. I'm not going to pay you back right now,
"even though I promised to do so."
And Jan Six let it slide.
It's a small reprieve.
A few more days or weeks or months
before the bigger debts come calling.
I catch my face in the mirror and it says,
"Paint me, man of sorrows."
And when it's finished...
..sell it for a few days more.
This is Rembrandt...
..in 1655. He's nearly 50 years old.
It's a very...
..special self-portrait.
You are eye and eye with him.
It's very immediate.
And I think the function of his self-portraits
changes throughout his career.
I mean, if you think back to his early works, you know,
it's much more taking your likeness as a model to experiment.
And by this time, this is self-observation.
This is not Rembrandt in fancy costume showing off.
The focus here is on his face. You know?
It's just the face and this expression.
And he is looking troubled.
And that, of course...
..is what he must have been in those years.
Rembrandt was not just facing financial troubles.
His partner Hendrickje Stoffels had been accused of living with him
without being married to him.
And that accusation, of course, was a public one.
And surely some of Rembrandt's friends,
some of his potential clients would have been disturbed by that.
Doors close.
My friend Jan Six takes a position on the town council
and he's appointed Head Of The Chamber For Marital Affairs.
Of course, he can no longer associate
with the city's most famous marital embarrassment.
I know he was delighted by his portrait.
He made an entry in his album about it.
"Such a face had I, Jan Six."
But there we are.
He has the face I painted and a public face to save.
I understand entirely. Faces are my business...
..after all.
But business isn't going very well.
I'm ruined.
Well, on July 14th, 1656, Rembrandt went to the City Hall
and walked into the building and entered this room.
And here were the commissioners of the Chamber Of Insolvency.
The decoration of this building is full of symbolism,
and above the door of this room
we see a mythological figure - Icarus.
He had plans to fly like a bird, and in his hubris,
he flew too high to the sun
and the wax melted on his arms and he fell very deep.
And even above that decoration,
we see rats eating worthless papers
and we see a treasure box which is emptied and fallen over.
So all of this symbolizes the failure...
..actually, of Rembrandt in that particular moment,
to be forced to enter this room and to state his insolvency.
This day was a dark day in his life
and it surely, also, was a shameful situation.
I owe money everywhere to everyone.
I'm followed by a crowd of notaries all waving bills
and people who say they'd like a picture but not until next year.
I'm bankrupt.
Say what you like, everybody else did.
Why can't you paint something beautiful?
Why is nothing finished?
Why can't you pay your bills?
But there were some people who knew that in my '50s,
I was painting better than ever, closer to the truths of humanity.
Ugly.
Damaged.
Old.