Rembrandt's Whore

Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels attributed to Rembrandt

Twenty year-old Hendrickje Stoffels makes the journey from her Dutch village to Amsterdam to model for Rembrandt, forty-three. Rembrandt has her pose for his paintings and soon falls in love with her. Because of a contract he has signed regarding not being able to marry after his former wife's death, he is not able to marry her and thus she becomes his mistress. The lifelong affair produces a child, Cornelia.

Stoffels is later condemned and publicly labeled a whore by the Catholic Church. Their love goes far beyond the physical, however, and it is the young woman who ends up caring for the painter, protecting him from his voracious creditors and the Amsterdam politicians who would exploit his formidable talent. Stoffels encourages Rembrandt as he struggles to remain true to his vision against the spirit of a conservative philistine society.

The second half of Rembrandt's life was characterized by bankruptcy, illness, and his downfall from Amsterdam's best known painter to his exploitation by people who took advantage of his precarious situation. Stoffels stood by him and provided him with care and emotional support.

It is because of Hendrickje that Rembrandt was able to live, having lost his wife Saskia and children in a tragic manner.

Just paint it!

Love From An Insane Asylum

Untitled by Adolf Wolfli

In an earlier post, I wrote about Martin Rameriz, an artist who painted from his room in a California mental hospital. Now consider the art of Adolf Wolfli (1864-1930). Born in Switzerland, he was orphaned before his 10th birthday and spent most of his youth in a succession of foster homes or on the streets.

In 1890, he was sentenced to two years in prison for the attempted molestation of two young girls, and in 1895, after a third incident of alleged molestation of a 3 1/2 year-old girl, was committed to the Waldau Psychiatric Clinic in Bern, where he remained until his death in 1930. He spent most of his time at the mental hospital in isolation and by 1910 was writing and drawing. His early works were restless, symmetrical drawings on newspapers.

In 1908, Wolfli commenced his epic autobiography and it would consume the remaining 22 years of his life. The text, interspersed with poetry, musical compositions, and 3000 illustrations, totaled more than 25,000 pages. The epic was hand-bound by Wolfli and stacked in his cell. Consisting of 45 volumes, his autobiography eventually reached a height of more than six feet. The fascinating illustrations (see above) of the narrative are labyrinthine creations of densely combined text and idiosyncratic motifs.

A few days before his death, Wolfli lamented that he would be unable to complete the final section of the autobiography, a grandiose finale of nearly 3000 more songs, which he titled, "Funeral March." His works have been shown throughout Europe and the United States.

Just paint it!