Rembrandt’s Amsterdam house at Jodenbreestraat was number 4.
Rembrandt bought the substantial house on Amsterdam’s Jodenbreestraat in 1639, during the height of his success. The building included living quarters, a studio, a collection room, and space for pupils and visitors. Its purchase was expensive and became a major factor in the financial problems that eventually led to his bankruptcy.
The house is now preserved as the Rembrandt House Museum. The museum reconstructs the rooms and displays works, objects, and materials associated with Rembrandt’s working environment. It provides an unusually direct connection to the practical organization of a seventeenth-century artist’s household.
Modern visitors sometimes assume that Rembrandt was born in this building, but he was born in Leiden and moved to Amsterdam as an adult. The Jodenbreestraat house was his Amsterdam residence from 1639 until financial difficulties forced its sale in 1658. Its address is therefore a precise biographical detail, not merely the name of a museum.