Rembrandt and Saskia in the parable of the Prodigal Son

Rembrandt married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634, and for a few years his life had money and lightness in it, which is roughly when he painted this. He casts himself as the prodigal son of the parable, the one who blows his inheritance on wine and bad company, and he sets Saskia on his knee while he twists round to raise a tall glass at us, grinning. It was a bold thing to do with a Bible story that was usually a warning. The plumed hat and the sword mark him as playing dress-up in the role of the wastrel. What the scene doesn't tell you is how short that happiness ran. Of the children Saskia bore, only one survived infancy, and she herself died in 1642, still in her twenties. The painting stays fixed at the earlier moment, the toast raised and not yet drunk.