Venetia, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed British Some of the elements in

Some of the elements in this sketch and in the final painting seem to reference motifs by Paolo Veronese (the angels lifting the grave's lid)

velvet and brocade

Pluto carries Proserpine to the underworld

keeper of the Royal Treasury

More than three hundred and fifty years after she was painted - Rembrandt's ability to conjure up the sense of a living being out of paint can still astound

Venetia, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed British Some of the elements inVenetia Stanley (1600 33) was famous for her dazzling beauty and notorious for the sexual licence of her youth, something not usually tolerated in English seventeenth century high society. Sir Kenelm Digby, a poet and scientist of some distinction, fell so completely in love with her that in 1625 he married her, in secret and against the wishes of his family. When Lady Digby died unexpectedly in her sleep, during the night of 30 April 1633, Sir Kenelm