Rembrandt's Portraits of Saskia van Uylenburgh

Beloved Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn is marking a big milestone this year: The 350th anniversary of his death. In celebration of his masterful use of light and depictions of tender human moments, his name is plastered across billboards all over the Netherlands, where almost a third of his roughly 300 paintings will be on view over the course of 2019. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam displayed every work in its collection by the artist in a show called All the Rembrandts, and the Mauritshuis is exhibiting all of its Rembrandts as well. The roughly 12-by-14-foot Night Watch (1642), one of his masterpieces, is now being conserved live in the Rijksmuseum to audiences of curious onlookers. And in Fries, an hour-and-a-half drive east of Amsterdam, an exhibition called Rembrandt and Saskia presented a portrait of the artist and his short, but meaningful, relationship with Saskia van Uylenburgh, the only woman who was ever officially Mrs. Rembrandt van Rijn.

Perhaps overdue, he’s now sharing a bit of his spotlight with the love of his life. Saskia was undoubtedly a strong presence in Rembrandt’s life, but as for which paintings she actually modeled for, the jury of art historians is still out. The total number of times Saskia’s likeness appears in Rembrandt’s work ranges between five and 12, depending on who you ask; some still like to play a three-century-old game of “spot that Saskia lookalike.”

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