It was in vain that the Stathouder continued his patronage, giving him a commission for two pictures, "The Circumcision" and "The Adoration of the Shepherds," for which, on the twenty-ninth of September 1646, he paid the sum of 2400 florins, just double what he had paid before. It was in vain that the rising artists could not fail to perceive his transcendent merits, and that pupils from all Europe sought him out, Michiel Willemans, Ulric Mayr, and Franz Wulfhagen, Christoph Paudiss, Juriaen Avens, Bernard Keilh, Cornelis Drost, Nicholas Maes, Carel Fabritius, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and many more. He had ceased, apparently, to attract the public. At any rate, though his productive energy was unabated, his affairs grew ever more and more involved.
In 1647, Saskia's relations began to be alarmed, demanding that the valuation of the property at the date of her death should be ascertained without delay, and Rembrandt replied that to the best of his belief it had been 40,750 florins. It is a little difficult to understand what right they had to formulate this demand, since, according to the will, the property was virtually Rembrandt's own, unless he married again, and this, to all appearance, he had, at that time, no idea of doing, though rumours to the contrary may well have reached their ears. A certain Geertje Dircx, the widow of one Abraham Clæsz, who had been engaged, probably not long after Saskia's death, as nurse to the infant Titus, who was always delicate, came in time to hope that she might aspire to rank as his step-mother; on January 24th, 1648, she made her will, neglecting the relations we know her to have had and bequeathing everything she legally could to Titus. Within two years, however, on October 1st, 1649, she repudiated her will, gave Rembrandt warning, and brought against him the equivalent of an action for breach of promise of marriage, to which he replied by an affidavit denying that their relations had ever been other than those of master and servant. In fact, her pretensions seem to have been only the delusions of her disordered brain, for in the course of the next year, 1650, she had to be removed and placed in confinement in a madhouse at Gouda, for which Rembrandt advanced the expenses, and, needless to say, never got them back.