his year (2019) commemorates the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death. It has been marked by numerous exhibitions. “Young Rembrandt: Rising Star”, now showing at the Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden, will come to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in February 2020. Both the exhibition and this book pose the same question: how did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? How did a miller’s son from a provincial city in Holland, born at the dawn of the 17th century, become one of the most famous painters in the world? Both seek the answer in his native city of Leiden.
A great deal is known about Rembrandt’s life and work after he moved to Amsterdam and set up a large studio, taking on pupils and enjoying immediate success. Very little is known up to then. “How,” marvelled a contemporary, “could a youth, a Dutchman, a beardless miller produce work that compares to all the beauty that has been produced through the ages?” All we really know about Rembrandt’s first quarter century is that it was spent in Leiden. He never took the journey to Rome that shaped the art and sensibilities of many 17th-century artists, and yet he succeeded in rivalling his contemporaries and predecessors – even the great Rubens – in his grasp of the Italianate Grand Manner, and surpassed them in psychological profundity and originality.
Onno Blom, the author of this book, is a newspaper columnist and television presenter. A native of Leiden, he is ideally qualified to investigate the backstory. Blom’s problem is that there is “so little to know, so little to visit”. Only “a few dozen documents have survived: entries in administrative registers (bonboeken) relating to his family, the house and the mill… in which he was raised and notarial instruments. We have not a single letter, diary or notebook.” Given the paucity of material, Blom says, “I made it personal, I made it completely different to how an art historian would do it.” This is indeed true. The book’s strength does not lie in art historical investigation. It is at its best when describing the city of Leiden and providing a wide background panorama to Rembrandt’s early life.
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