dowless 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