© DVN, een project van Huygens ING en OGC (UU). Bronvermelding: Ben Broos, en, in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland. URL: https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/en [08/10/2014] Adopted by Ernst Kloek .
UYLENBURGH, Saskia (baptised Leeuwarden, 2 August 1612 – died Amsterdam, 14 June 1642), Rembrandt’s first wife. Daughter of Rombertus Rommertsz Uylenburgh (1554-1624), burgomaster of Leeuwarden and councillor at the Provincial Court of Friesland, and Sjoukje Aessinga (Osinga) (1565-1619). Saskia Uylenburgh married Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), painter, on 22 June 1634 in Sint Annaparochie (Het Bildt, Friesland). The couple had 4 children, of whom 1 son lived to adulthood.
Youth
Saskia Uylenburgh grew up as the youngest of eight children (three sons and five daughters) in a stately townhouse at Ossekop 11 in Leeuwarden. Her father, who was already 58 when Saskia was born, was a member of the Reformed Church and the son of a merchant who had worked his way up to senior positions in the city and regional government of Leeuwarden and Friesland. Saskia was six when her mother died, and eleven when she lost her father. In the following years, her sisters Antje, Hiskia and Titia married in quick succession (in 1626, 1627 and 1628, respectively), leaving Saskia as the only unmarried daughter. In 1628 the house at Ossekop 11 was sold and Saskia, a sixteen-year-old orphan, moved in with her sister Hiskia, who was married to Gerrit van Loo, secretary of the district of Het Bildt in the north of Friesland. They lived – rather grandly, by all accounts – in the Regthuys in Sint Annaparochie. Saskia therefore spent her last years as a teenager among the country folk of Het Bildt, who were, however, anything but illiterate.
Around 1630 Saskia must have returned regularly to Leeuwarden to see her godmother Sas. Her brothers Rombertus and Ulricus, both lawyers, also lived in Leeuwarden, where she must have got wind of an artistic avant-garde in Amsterdam. In the Leeuwarden branch of the art dealership run by her Amsterdam cousin Hendrick Uylenburgh, the canvases traded included some by a certain Rembrandt van Rijn. The branch was run by Lambert Jacobsz, two of whose pupils, Govaert Flinck of Cleves and Jacob Backer of Harlingen, resolved in the spring of 1633 to visit the master’s studio in Amsterdam. Saskia decided to accompany them.
Marriage
Since 1631 Rembrandt had been under contract to Hendrick Uylenburgh to paint portraits of the citizens of Amsterdam and to direct his ‘academy’. In 1632 he thus painted the portraits of Saskia’s cousin Aeltje Uylenburgh and her husband, the minister Johannes Cornelisz Sylvius. At that time Saskia must have seen Rembrandt’s recently finished Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632). She was 21, six years younger than Rembrandt, when they became engaged on 5 June 1633, shortly after their first meeting. Below the drawing Rembrandt made of her that summer, he wrote ‘my housewife’: in other words, they were engaged and planned to marry. The drawing must have been made in Friesland, when Rembrandt was presumably consulting Saskia’s brother-in-law and guardian, Gerrit van Loo, about their intended marriage. At this time Saskia was an underage orphan, and therefore had to request a venia aetatis from the court: the dispensation from underage status required when parental consent was lacking. The fact that she followed this procedure does not necessarily mean that she married against her guardians’ wishes. Even so, the union can be called remarkable at the very least. Saskia was the only Uylenburgh daughter who did not marry an academic, and her Frisian relatives later spoke of her as ‘only a painter’s wife’.
After her engagement, Saskia continued to live in Friesland. She was not in Amsterdam when Rembrandt registered their intended marriage there on 10 June 1634; Saskia’s proxy was her cousin Johannes Sylvius. Rembrandt’s mother gave her consent in a letter written from Leiden, and apparently did not attend the ceremony when the marriage was solemnised on 22 June 1634 in Sint Annaparochie. The church register records Saskia’s place of residence at the time as Franeker. After the death of her sister Antje on 9 November 1633, Saskia – the still-unmarried, youngest daughter – had probably taken on the running of the household for her widowed brother-in-law Johannes Maccovius, a popular but formidable professor of theology.
After the wedding, Saskia moved in with her cousin Hendrick Uylenburgh, who lived in Amsterdam at Jodenbreestraat 2, where Rembrandt had already been living since 1632. On 1 May 1635, the young couple moved to Doelenstraat, in the ‘Rijke Buurt’ (Rich Neighbourhood). Saskia was expecting their first child. Their son Rumbartus, named after Saskia’s father, died at the age of only two months and was buried on 15 February 1636 in the Zuiderkerk (South Church). On ‘May Day’ 1637 the couple moved to ‘Die Suykerbackerij’ on the Binnen Amstel. Their daughter Cornelia, named after Rembrandt’s mother, was baptised on 22 July 1638 by Saskia’s cousin Sylvius. The records show that she was buried three weeks later.
In that same year – 1638 – problems arose in Saskia’s family. Frisian family members complained that Saskia was squandering her inheritance. On the advice of their lawyer, Saskia’s brother Ulricus Uylenburgh, Rembrandt defended himself by arguing that he and his wife were ‘abundantly well-off’. Their purchase of an expensive house was proof of their easy circumstances. On 5 January 1639, Rembrandt signed the deed of conveyance (to the amount of 13,000 guilders) for the house at Jodenbreestraat 4 (now the Museum het Rembrandthuis). On 29 July 1640, a second daughter, likewise named Cornelia, was baptised, but she lived a mere two weeks. The only child of Saskia and Rembrandt to survive infancy was Titus, named after Saskia’s late sister Titia and baptised on 22 September 1641. Titus (1641-1668) later married Magdalena van Loo, a cousin of his uncle Gerrit van Loo, his mother’s erstwhile guardian.
Model?
We do not know much about what Saskia Uylenburgh did, but we do know what she looked like, for Rembrandt used her many times as a model in paintings, etchings and drawings, often posing in biblical or historical garb as, for example, Flora, Minerva, Sophonisba, Susanna or Delilah. Portraits of Saskia in everyday clothing are rare. The first silverpoint portrait of Saskia inspired Rembrandt to paint his Flora of 1634, for which Saskia probably did not pose. A singular etching of 1634 seems to show her festively decked out for the wedding. In 1635 Rembrandt again painted Saskia as Flora. He and she both appear in a painting of the prodigal son squandering his inheritance at the inn, which also dates from 1635, as does the drawing of Saskia by the window, resting her elbow on a ledge, with an open book in front of her. In 1636 he made an etching of himself working with Saskia at his side. Rembrandt often drew Saskia pregnant or ill in bed during the last years of her life.
Saskia was presumably dying of tuberculosis when she had her will drawn up on 5 June 1642. She named Titus as her sole heir, and granted Rembrandt the usufruct of her estate, provided he did not remarry. Saskia died at the age of 29 on 14 June 1642 and was buried on 19 June in the Oude Kerk (Old Church). After her death, a portrait dating from the early years of their marriage – showing her in profile as the personification of ‘Luxuria’ – was given a makeover: Rembrandt changed the purse in her hand into a sprig that has been identified as rosemary, a symbol of marital fidelity.
Reputation
After Rembrandt’s death, Saskia Uylenburgh soon faded into oblivion, because she was confused with Geertje Dircks, the nursemaid Rembrandt hired to care for Titus after Saskia’s death. Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was assumed that the painter had married a country lass from Ransdorp. It was only in 1810 that Saskia’s name was first mentioned – in passing – in an article about Rembrandt’s prints (see Broos, Rembrandts ‘huisvrouw’, note 36), and in 1862 she was finally rediscovered as a burgomaster’s daughter from Leeuwarden and Rembrandt’s first wife. Nevertheless, she is still considered by some to have been ‘a sweet, good-natured, innocent, a well-bred but provincial country lass dazzled by the famous artist and his urbane milieu’ (Dickey 2002). This notion is mistaken, however. Saskia Uylenburgh has rightly been called Rembrandt’s muse, and she was undoubtedly his first great love, even though some Rembrandt connoisseurs still claim that the artist married her for her money. A less frequently asked question is why a burgomaster’s daughter from Leeuwarden would marry an Amsterdam artist in the first place.
Archives
See W.L. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, The Rembrandt documents (1979), and the annotations in the publications of Ben Broos.
Bibliography
- W. Eekhoff, ‘De vrouw van Rembrandt’, Europa. Verzameling van in- en uitlandsche lettervruchten 3 (Amsterdam 1862) 112-165.
- C.K. Bolton, Saskia. The wife of Rembrandt (New York/Boston 1893).
- J. Faber, ‘Het geboortehuis van Saskia, Rembrandts vrouw’, Leovardia 1 (2000) 1, 13-18.
- Ben Broos, ‘Rembrandt: verliefd, verloofd, getrouwd’, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2001) 1-2, 32-43.
- Julia Lloyd Williams ed., Rembrandt’s women. Exhibition catalogue National Gallery of Scotland and Royal Academy of Arts (Edinburgh 2001).
- S.S. Dickey, ‘Rembrandt and Saskia: art, commerce, and the poetics of portraiture’, in: A. Chong and M. Zell ed., Rethinking Rembrandt (Zwolle/Boston 2002) 16-47.
- Ben Broos, ‘Saskia Uylenburgh. Friese jongedochter, Rembrandts bruid’, Fryslân 9 (2003) 22-29.
- Ben Broos, ‘Rembrandts “huisvrouw” en haar vroegste biografen’, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2003) 1-2, 34-45.
- Ben Broos, ‘Rembrandts Zeeuwse connectie: François Coopal en Titia Uylenburgh’, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2005) 1-2, 24-32.
- Ben Broos, ‘Rembrandts eerste reis naar Friesland’, Oud-Holland 118 (2005) 79-91.
Illustration
- Engagement portrait of Saskia by Rembrandt, 8 June 1633. Drawing in silver on parchment (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin). From: Lloyd Williams ed., Rembrandt’s women.
- Saskia as a bride by Rembrandt, 1634. Etching (British Museum, London). From: Lloyd Williams ed., Rembrandt’s women.
Author: Ben Broos
last updated: 08/10/2014