The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 24

Rembrandt: Compliant Calvi
traits of Jews than any other Amsterdam
painter, another point of contention for
the Calvinists. Rembrandt did not seem
to care what his critics thought of him
for doing so. His temperament and motivation
seemed to come from warmth
and tolerance, not ideology, as the early
painting The Stoning of St. Stephen suggests.
11 Even during his period of success
in the 1630s, when he bought one
of the largest houses in Amsterdam, he
was still more or less in the same neighborhood,
just around the end corner of
Sint Antoniesbreestraat. He lived there
for at least twenty years until bankruptcy
forced him to move to the Jordaan,
another poor neighborhood known as
an enclave for outsiders.
Never modest, Rembrandt’s attitudes
towards other social conventions
further support a disregard of Calvinist
morals. Scandals plagued him, their origins
of his own making. Some stemmed
from the subject matter of his artwork.
Like a shape-shifter, he portrayed himself
in dozens of self-portraits, ranging
from experimental expressions in
the 1620s that give the impression of a
sardonic sense of humor to theatrical
disguises in the 1630s that many considered
outrageously pretentious. Risqué
bedroom scenes in which his wife
Saskia modeled set gossip rampaging.
Further scandals that would
have heaped disdain on him came after
Saskia’s death in 1642: Rembrandt cohabited
with two women, first with his
son’s nurse, then with a young housekeeper,
Hendrickje Stoffels, until her
death from the plague in 1663. He did
not marry either woman, most likely
9