Young Rembrandt: A Biography

Like Shakespeare, Rembrandt van Rijn left us a world rich with his work but with few clues about his enigmatic life. How did a miller’s son from a provincial Dutch town become arguably the greatest artist of his age?


To find out, Dutch writer Onno Blom immersed himself in Leiden, the city in which Rembrandt was born in 1606 and where he spent his first twenty-five years. The result is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man, rich in local and biographical detail, and restless in its efforts to seek out the roots of Rembrandt’s genius. Evocatively told and beautifully illustrated with more than 100 color images, Young Rembrandt tells a fascinating story of artistic evolution against the turbulent backdrop of Leiden’s cultural and commercial heyday during the Dutch Golden Age.