Titus at his desk

Rembrandt painted his son Titus here around 1655. The boy was about 14, the only one of Rembrandt's children with his wife Saskia to survive to adulthood. He sits at a school desk, an inkwell hanging from it, a pen case at his side, but he isn't working. His eyes have drifted off the page and his thumb is pressed to his lip, caught in the middle of a daydream. Within a year of this the household would come apart. Rembrandt's spending had outrun him, and in 1656 he filed for insolvency and began selling off his house and his collection. None of that trouble is in the picture. It is only a father watching his son not do his homework, the paint loose and warm around the boy's face.