“This great Dutch master” (he quoted from Mr. Colvin) “succeeded in making as wonderful pictures out of spiritual abjectness and physical gloom as the Italians out of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day.”

[Illustration:  FLORA WITH A FLOWER-TRIMMED CROOK

1634.  The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.]

At this point of his discourse he began to feel more confidence, and he proceeded to focus his remarks upon four periods in Rembrandt’s life—­epochs that lend themselves to separate treatment, each epoch marked by the production of a masterpiece, and one remarkable portrait that has a particular and pathetic interest.  Those four pictures are The Anatomy Lesson, painted in 1632, when he was twenty-six; the Sortie of a Company of Amsterdam Musketeers, known as The Night Watch, painted in 1642, when he was thirty-six; The Syndics of the Cloth Hall, painted in 1662, when he was fifty-six; and his own portrait, painted in 1667, two years before his death.  “His Anatomy Lesson,” says M. Michel, “was the glorification of Science itself; in his Sortie of a Company of Amsterdam Musketeers he embodied that civic heroism which had lately compassed Dutch independence; and in a group of five cloth merchants seated round a table, discussing the affairs of their guild, he summed up, as it were, in a few immortal types, the noble sincerity of Dutch portraiture.”

The Anatomy Lesson was the picture that gave Rembrandt his opportunity, and proclaimed his preeminence among the painters in Amsterdam.  It was the custom in those days for corporations, civic bodies, and associations of various kinds, to commemorate their period of office by commissioning portrait groups which should hand down their worthy faces to posterity.  The desire of the less prominent members of the associations thus painted was that each head should be a likeness, plainly recognisable,—­that one burgher should not be treated with more importance than another.  This desire for present and posthumous commemoration extended to medical circles.  Portraits and portrait groups of famous physicians and surgeons were painted and hung in the theatres where they lectured or operated.  Dr. Tulp, an eminent surgeon of the day, commissioned Rembrandt to represent him performing an operation, proposing to present the picture to the Surgeons’ Guild in memory of his professorship.  The grave, realistic picture called The Anatomy Lesson, now hanging at the Hague Museum, was the result.  The corpse lies upon the dissecting table; before it stands Dr. Tulp, wearing a broad-brimmed hat; around him are grouped seven elderly students.  Some are absorbed by the operation, others gaze thoughtfully at the professor, or at the spectator.  Dr. Tulp indicates with his forceps one of the tendons of the subject’s left arm, and appears to be addressing the students, or practitioners, for these seven bearded men have long passed the age of studentship.  This picture made Rembrandt’s reputation.  He was but twenty-six; the world seemed to be at his feet; in the two following years he painted forty portraits.