# Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodigal Son in the Tavern [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 161 x 131 cm ## Commentary Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodigal Son in the Tavern c. 1635 Oil on canvas, 161 x 131 cm Gemäldegalerie, Dresden <a href="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/database/glossary/note03.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=300,height=400'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return false">Catalogue number:</a> Bredius 30. This unique double portrait of Rembrandt and Saskia \(c. 1635-36\) seems to offer an ironic and reflective gaze at his life. Here, too, an etching echoes the subject of the painting, but in the 1636 etched double portrait Rembrandt shows himself at work, drawing as he looks up at the viewer. In the Dresden painting Saskia sits on the lap of a foppishly dressed Rembrandt, who gaily holds up a flagon of ale as he twists to offer a silly grin out of the picture. This tavern setting at once indulges a current "Arcadian" fashion for showing fashionable ladies as courtesans \(yet another incarnation of the goddess Flora, with whom Rembrandt had already identified Saskia\) as well as draws upon the pictorial tradition of the Prodigal Son with the tavern harlots. It is worth noting that the lavish dress of this couple offers an echo of the finery in the Kassel profile of Saskia, but here the suggestion of loose living and of future repentance from the Prodigal Son analogy also sounds a note of self-criticism. ## Related artworks - [A black drummer and commander mounted on mules; riding in profile]() - [A child being taught to walk]() - [A cottage beneath trees]() - [A girl sleeping]() - [A Man Laughing]() - [A man making water]() - [A Peddler Selling Spectacles \(The Allegory of Sight\)]() - [A Polish Nobleman]() - [A Scholar]() - [A two-humped camel]() - [A woman in Zeeland costume, from the back]() - [A woman in Zeeland costume, from the front]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()