Rembrandt, like his countryman Van Gogh, died broke, but, unlike Van Gogh, who famously never sold a painting, Rembrandt had enjoyed great commercial success before falling on hard times. Still, both were penniless at the end; Rembrandt died a debtor and was buried in an unmarked grave. How tiresomely ironic, then, that a Rembrandt painting should sell for $33,000,000; as tiresomely ironic as Van Gogh's works going for similar sums when what he got when he was alive was bupkis mit kuduchas, as they were wont to say back in the shtetl. The Rembrandt canvas is the charmingly titled "Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo," or "Man Akimbo" to us cognoscenti; the buyer, an anonymous telephone bidder, presumably with bona fides sufficient to convince the seller that he wasn't just a midnight drunk halfway through his telephonic rounds, with the Pope and the President coming up next on his Rolodex. Anyway, it wasn't me, I promise. If I had $33M to blow it wouldn't be on art but on mundanities like cars and real estate. Ah, I can already see the view from the upstairs terrace: Vesuvius smoking quietly across the bay, Naples spread out below, grapes glistening on the vines in the dawn light, the Maserati awaiting the signore's morning drive....