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Title:       Rembrandt
Author:      Sharp, Elizabeth A.

Chapter III

Chapter III - Youth - Leyden

     Leyden - Its University and prominent men - Rembrandt's parents and home
- Rembrandt's birth - Boyhood - Surroundings - Interests - Schooling -
Apprenticeship - Swanenburgh - "Vanitas" - Lastman's studio in Amsterdam -
Technique - Etching - Etchers of the sixteenth century - Rembrandt the etcher
- His progress as painter - Contemporaries - Return to Leyden - Guilds of
painters - Theatre of Anatomy - Self-portraiture - Early paintings - Early
etchings - Early portraits - Biblical subjects - Portraits of his mother - His
Leyden period - Method of development - His technique - Huygens' record of
Rembrandt in Leyden.

     In the early days of the seventeenth century Leyden, a flourishing city,
ranked second in importance to Amsterdam.  Its industries flourished, its
cloth factories were the first in Europe, its burgher merchants were its
aristocrats.  The memory of the terrible experiences of the famous war, become
a thrilling tradition to the rising generation of Holland, was fading in the
growing prosperity of this fair, cultured city.  The celebrated University,
founded in commemoration of the victorious siege, was Leyden's chief witness
to her intellectual supremacy in the Republic, and indeed in Europe.  Students
flocked to it from all parts of Holland, from all parts of Europe; it counted
among its professors such distinguished men as Scaliger, Lipsius, Vossius, and
Arminius, whose name is associated with the Calvinistic struggle.

     Rembrandt's parents lived at the corner of the Weddesteg (the little
street of the slaughter-house), near the Wittepoort (the White Gate), in a
house on the angle of the ramparts at a point where the Rhine divides and
forms a natural moat round the town and feeds its canals with moving water.
Much of the old town still stands - houses with crows' nests and gables, busy
tree-shaded canals, the stone-paved market-square dominated by a great
windmill, the picturesque central Burg dating from Saxon days and dominated by
the tower of the old cathedral.  The ramparts have gone; the town has grown
out beyond the Rhine limit on the western side; a school for young seamen
stands on the place of the painter's early home.

     Rembrandt Harmenszoon, or Harmensz, van Rijn was the son of Harmen
Gerritsz van Rijn, a miller, and of his wife Neeltje (Cornelia), the daughter
of Willems, a Leyden baker.  Rembrandt's father belonged to the lesser burgher
class, and lived in comfortable prosperity.  An old print published in
Vosmaer's biography shows the position of his mill and house with its enclosed
garden, and finally destroys the legend that the painter was born and lived in
a mill near the village of Leydersdorp.  It has been proved, moreover, by M.
Rammelman Elsevier, a distinguished palaeographer and descendant of the famous
printers of Leyden, in the Konst en Letterbode, that Harmen lived in the
Weddesteg from 1599-1646.  That he was a man of some education and worth is
witnessed by the fact that he held more than once the post of "Chief of the
Parish of the Pelican District." Recent researches show that he owned a grave
in the church of St. Peter's; and that, according to his will, he died
possessed of a windmill, several houses, plate, jewels, linen, and other
household items, also of some gardens outside the town.  Rembrandt was the
fifth of six children born to the miller and his wife.  The exact date of
birth is uncertain; authorities are divided whether to accept July 15th, 1606,
1607, or 1609-1606 is the most probable, being that given by the early
biographers, Orlers (whose Description of Leyden was published in Rembrandt's
lifetime), Leeuwen, and Houbraken.  Vosmaer Rembrandt's chief Dutch
biographer) rejected this date for 1608, upon Dr. Scheltema's discovery of the
entry dated July 10th, 1634, in the marriage registers of Amsterdam:
"Rembrandt Harmensz, of Leyden, aged 26." In the British Museum there is an
etched portrait of Rembrandt by himself, inscribed: Aet 24, anno 1631.
Charles Blanc points out that the figure 24 may be read as 25, and thus bring
the date into accord with the preferred date of birth 1606.  But I should like
to point out that the inscription "anno 1631" does not necessitate the birth
date 1607, unless the etching were executed after July 15th.  Therefore it is
possible still to accept the inscription as a proof of the birth date 1606.
One of two documents found by Dr. Bredius (the Curator of the Mauritshuis at
The Hague) tends to further confusion.  It is the proces-verbal of a committee
of experts convened in September 16th, 1653, to decide upon the attribution of
a picture to Paul Bril, and speaks of Rembrandt as "about forty-six." If
accepted literally it places the birth date in 1607; but if we accept it as
meaning "in his forty-sixth year" the birth date remains 1606.  The second
document is a Register of students of the Faculty of Letters at Leyden in
1620, in which Rembrandt's age is stated as fourteen, and thus again confirms
the birth date as 1606; and this date we propose to accept, and the more
readily as it is upheld by such competent critics as Messrs. Bredius, Bode,
Karl Woermann, and E. Michel.

[Hear On Leyden]
The painter was born and lived in a mill.

     Little is known of Rembrandt's boyhood.  Though details of his early life
are lacking, we are very familiar with the appearance and character of his
parents, from the many drawings and paintings the youth made of them. Very
familiar is the thin, resolute face of the miller with his beak nose, small
keen eyes, and compressed determined lips - a man of will, persistence, and
activity, who, judging from the lines of his face, had overcome manifold
difficulties on his road to success.  The mother we know still better.  From
the loving, respectful care the son bestowed on her portraits, from his
studies of her habitual positions of repose or during her daily occupations,
it is easy to infer how strong and wise was the influence she exerted on the
mind and character of her impressionable, warm-hearted son.  The lines of a
strong character and a generous, kindly disposition are written in the loved
face, already aged and marked by time and suffering when the boy was old
enough to draw her at home and watch while she sat in her armchair with folded
hands, or read, horn spectacles on nose, from the pages of the great Bible
spread open before her.  Of his brothers and sisters we know little; of their
childhood, nothing.  In after days Rembrandt drew one or two portraits of his
elder brother, the miller, and in his early days in Amsterdam he used his
sister Lysbeth's quiet fair face as the model for many of his women
characters.  But it is a significant fact that even from his earliest days he
seems to have been little attracted by childhood, by immaturity, as such.  His
passion was to depict life in full abounding expression.  In his veins, along
his nerves, ran the strong, passionate energy of life in expansion, not life
in the bud, actual not potential, of his powerful nation; and nothing immature
or weak stayed his pencil, unless deliberately selected for a definite
purpose.  Hence we may infer that in his childhood he stood somewhat apart
from his brothers and their playmates, sought his own interests and
amusements, and almost unconsciously began the quest that should absorb his
whole lifetime, with, perhaps, only Lysbeth for confidant and admirer.  Else
there would surely remain some sketches or drawings of these playmates, some
Ostade-like scenes of youth that had impressed him strongly.  Yet, as a boy,
his artistic imagination was stimulated in a hundred ways.  There was much at
his very door to see and watch.  The coming in and out of market folk,
incidents of the slaughter-house, the picturesque meetings at the Doelen in
the Weddesteg, of the archers, or halberdiers, with their brilliant scarves
and feathered hats; the marketing of the housewives, the transport of
merchandise in the slow barges on the canals; the arrival of travellers in
lumbering coaches, on horseback or by canal, and the endless horde of beggars,
crippled and in rags, that the protracted wars had thrown upon the country.
Endless things there were to watch while daylight lasted, and at night, in
winter, expressive faces to draw in the glow of the firelight, or by the light
of lamp or candle that threw fantastic shapes and shadows on ceilings and
walls, and left the remote corners in gloom, effects never forgotten, which
haunted the painter throughout life.  As a child he found untiring interest in
turning over the pages of the great Bible with its fine engravings, and in
listening at his mother's knee while she told him Bible stories in reverent
homely speech, and thus stored his mind with sacred lore from which, later, he
drew so constantly, and depicted in accordance with his personal
interpretation.

     At other times he loved to wander out by the White Gate with its Gothic
towers, across the river into the low-lying meadow-land, past the richly
cultivated gardens to the wide stretches of pasturage beyond with their canals
and low line of willows and sedges, past the isolated cottages with their
high, pitched roofs surrounded by trees to protect them from the bitter winds,
and near to the windmills that here and there dominated the level land
stretching away to the dyke-guarded sea.

     In such surroundings a different phase of life would attract the boy and
enthrall his spirit.  There, he would find himself face to face with nature,
with the play of elements, with the expression of life in an impersonal
aspect, immense, mysterious, now kindly, now terrifying.  There, the straight
lines of cattle-dotted fields and water-channels carry the eye over the great
spaces to the low, distant horizon, where it touches the vast covering dome of
sky, that by comparison reduces the habitable land to a few acres always at
the mercy of powerful elements.  There, all the petty details of life are
forgotten - the evidences of human toil are reduced to the simplest
expression.  In their place, a marvellous procession of clouds, densely
gathered, or wind-scattered athwart a sky of rain-swept blue - an
ever-changing succession of cloud-forms, delicate as a shadow or compact and
purple-grey, revealing in their passage the glitter of tremulous leaves, a red
splatch of roof, the sharp white line of water, or the sudden swaying of trees
as their tops are caught by the passing blast.  Exquisite days of golden
stillness would be alternated with the deep fascination of invading mists, of
silvery veils softening and beautifying, or of sullen grey encroaching and
concealing, with now and again a sharp shaft of light piercing a rent of
cloud, isolating and irradiating one spot of earth, and deepening the mystery
of gloom around.  Such visions would sink into the boy's mind, and deepen his
impressions, quicken his perception of the relative value of life, strengthen
the growing need and desire to give outward expression to the ceaselessly
growing, imperative emotions stirring within him.  Pencil and paper would be
his invariable companions; and doubtless his instruction in the then important
art of calligraphy gave firmness and strength to his hand, and trained his eye
in the appreciation of the beauty of the black line incisively drawn on white,
a natural preparation for the handling of the etching-needle.

     His parents evidently recognised that there was promise of no ordinary
sort in their son, and gave him as good an education as lay in their power.
They arranged for him to attend Latin classes for the ultimate study of law at
the University, in the proud hope that he might afterwards be of service to
his country and town.  But he preferred the school of Nature to the teaching
to be procured from the professor's desk, and record is not necessary to
assure us that the boy frequently played truant.  Wherefore, when he was about
fifteen, his parents consented that he should follow his own bent and be
apprenticed to a painter.  Leyden was a flourishing art centre in those days,
and boasted of local talent.  The Town Hall treasured the celebrated "Last
Judgment" by Lucas van Leyden, also a large altar-piece by his master,
Cornelius Engelbrechtsz, concerning which van Mander wrote that "mighty
monarchs had made proposals for its acquisition, but their offers were
politely declined by the magistrate, who did not wish to part with so glorious
a production by his fellow-countryman." Leyden never tired of the rumour of
how the Emperor Rudolph, wishful to buy the great picture, had offered to
cover it with gold coin.  Few names have come down to us of the members of the
Painters' Guild from among whom a teacher was selected. We know that Joris van
Schooten (1587-1651) had adorned the walls of the neighbouring Doelen with a
large portrait group of officers; that Isaac Claesz van Swanenburgh had been
commissioned in 1578 to paint a series of panels for the Cloth Hall
representing the various processes of sheep-shearing, spinning, weaving,
dyeing, and packing, interesting little historical notes, now hidden away in a
remote corner of the old hall.  Jacob van Swanenburgh, the son of Isaac, a
mediocre painter but a man of good repute and social standing, was eventually
chosen; to him Rembrandt was apprenticed for three years and lived in his
family, as was the habit of the day.  Swanenburgh had followed the example of
Jan Schorel, who was appointed in 1527 superintendent of the works of the
Vatican by his countryman, Pope Adrian VI., and other contemporary artists,
and had studied in Italy, where he had taken to himself a wife.  Rembrandt
worked hard, and was kindly treated by his master, who mixed in the best
society of the town and did not exploit his pupils as was the frequent habit
of the day.  The exact year of Rembrandt's apprenticeship is not known,
possibly 1620 - the year the Pilgrim Fathers left Holland to found New
Amsterdam in America - or 1622, when he would be sixteen years old.  Among
other forms of work he had set him to do were the still-life compositions
called "Vanitas," arrangements of various objects symbolising mortality,
peculiar to Leyden, and much appreciated by the stern orthodox burghers.
These "Vanitas" were introduced by the local artist David Bailly, to whose
work Rembrandt's "Money-Changer" shows some affinity.

     Rembrandt made such rapid and remarkable progress that Swanenburgh soon
realised he could teach him nothing, and prophesied a brilliant future for his
pupil.  Rembrandt determined to seek a wider field and better teaching, and
arrangements were made for him in 1624 to study under Pieter Lastman in
Amsterdam.  This choice was not a good one, though Lastman was held in high
repute in those days.  He, too, was under Italian influence, a careful
draughtsman who finished highly, but was spiritless in his composition.  A few
examples of his work are to be found in public galleries - such as "Ulysses
and Nausicaa" and "David Singing in the Temple" in the Brunswick Museum, "The
Raising of Lazarus" in the Mauritshuis, all very flat and uninteresting; and
the Russian Count Stelsky possesses a "Peter and Paul before the Altar to the
Unknown God," which, however, has been so much repainted as to look wholly
modern.  Although Rembrandt remained with this master only a few months, six
probably, he was, nevertheless, influenced by him in his love of Oriental
detail, in certain forms of drapery, costume, and architecture.  He possessed
one of Lastman's sketch-books, and from him borrowed details of background for
his "Rape of Proserpine" and "The Baptism of the Eunuch." Lastman is credited
also with having influenced his pupil in the treatment of chiaroscuro.  It may
be so; he may have done this as instructor, but nothing in the treatment of
his pictures would lead one to such a conclusion.  The study of chiaroscuro
was one of the great problems that Dutch art set itself to solve.  Unattracted
by the problem of expressing ideal emotions or abstract thoughts on canvas,
these energetic practical Hollanders devoted themselves to the perfecting of
the technique of the art of painting, and mastery of handling was necessary
for any painter who sought the patronage of his fellow-townsmen.  In one
branch of his art Rembrandt learned much from Lastman - that of etching - a
form of art in which he was to attain such perfection, such originality, that
in his own century and ever since he has ranked as the supreme master.
Etching, whether practised first by Italians or Germans, owed its development
for purposes of illustration to the rise of the art of printing.  Early in the
days of the Reformation the different forms of engraving were encouraged in
Holland for the illustration of the Bible, books of science, etc., and it
became one of the reliable methods of livelihood for artists in the same way
as drawing in black and white for periodicals is in our own day.

     Between the days of Durer and Rembrandt there are few names of noted
etchers.  De Goudt and Jan van de Velde copied the pictures of Elsheimer and
De Molyn.  Goltzius was noted for the regular precision of his strokes;
Magdalene van de Passe, de Soutman, de Wierix, van de Velde, and de Goudt
developed a more picturesque, more personal style with delicate tones produced
by fine irregular lines, that made a tissue of shadow thick or slighter at
will.  By the painter-etchers, etching was much used when the art of landscape
drawing became national, to catch fleeting aspects, or to suggest qualities of
colour, movement, or the noting of fugitive impressions.  Etching, the most
personal of the arts, was assiduously cultivated by young Rembrandt, to whose
impetuous temperament the laborious, lengthy process of line engraving was
uncongenial.  Throughout his career, during formative and mature periods
alike, he made it the expression of his peculiar temperament; used it, with
hand wholly obedient to brain and eye, to express the most subtle, as well as
the most fleeting, of his emotional moods.

     Rembrandt may or may not have been in Amsterdam for only six months, but
if so, they were months of extraordinary moment.  From Lastman himself he
learned much of value besides technical instruction; moreover, he was face to
face with the best contemporary work being done in Holland - the work of
Honthorst, de Keyser, and, above all, of Frans Hals, of Haarlem.  In this
great art centre he heard and weighed the theories advanced by the advocates
of the two opposite styles of painting then in vogue.  The "Italian school"
with its clear methods was condemned as foreign and out of date by the growing
group of national naturalists, whose brown method and treatment of chiaroscuro
were in turn denounced by their travelled opponents as untrue and ignorant.
Among the "browns" ranked the famous painters, Ravesteijn, Honthorst, Bramer,
van Goyen, and Roghman, Rembrandt's precursor in the poetically realistic
conception of landscape with its aerial perspective, warm tones, and science
of chiaroscuro.

     Acquainted with the leading people of Leyden, thanks to Swanenburgh, the
young painter determined to make his independent essay in his native town, and
there he settled in 1624 and worked for seven years, befriended by Esaias van
de Velde and other artists.  These early years were among the most important
in his life.  He observed, pondered, and experimented.  Potentially he was a
great man then; for already he saw, as only the greatest artist sees - saw, as
it were, a new revelation of familiar things, and saw with so acute a creative
insight that he realised he could himself gain knowledge and experience no one
else could teach him - knowledge that he could not learn in the studios of
Amsterdam; that neither Florence, Rome, or even Venice could teach him; that
only Rembrandt van Rijn, in his own familiar environment, amid familiar
circumstances, could learn to know.  He sought neither masters nor schools for
instruction.  He simply worked, steadily, patiently, passionately; worked at
his art as at a trade - for it was regarded primarily as a trade in Holland -
and through this very conscientiousness, thoroughness, and mastery of his
trade, he made it the means wherewith he expressed the great aims and ideals
of his life.  So advanced was he in technical proficiency that by his
twenty-first year he had a pupil of promise, a fellow-townsman, born in the
same year as himself, who in due time became famous as Gerard Dou.

     It is not known where his studio was in Leyden, but Houbraken relates
"that he never left off working in the house of his parents while daylight
lasted"; and doubtless there is some truth in the stories that he developed
his love of chiaroscuro by watching the play of light and shade in the dusky
corners and among the dark beams of his father's mill, lighted by its one
window.  His years of apprenticeship entitled him to become a member of the
Artists' Guild (though of the fact there is no record), without which it was
difficult - in fact, impossible - for a young painter to gain customers.  M.
van der Willigen, in his Artists of Haarlem, has given an interesting account
of the valuable records left by the powerful Guild of St. Luke, which at the
end of the seventeenth century boasted of 174 painters of repute.  The laws of
the guild were severe.  "No one without the pale of the society could sell or
introduce his pictures." Many painters, therefore, found themselves forced to
join the guild in order to obtain the ordinary advantages of their own work.
"Every year two sales were announced by the officers of the guild; each member
could bring to the sale whatever he wished to sell." Even with the advantages
of the guild, painters, unless very prolific and very popular, were not
necessarily prosperous - as shown by the endless impecuniosity of Frans Hals,
one of the most famous members of the Guild of St. Luke.  Private patronage,
also, did much to encourage young painters of mark.  There were portraits
needed of noted burghers, statesmen, soldiers, or sailors; there were the
"Regent-pictures" to celebrate the various companies of archers, arquebusiers,
etc., and adorn the walls of their Doelen; there were also the anatomy
pictures, with which the walls of the medical and surgical lecture-halls were
adorned.  It will easily be understood that in a country of realistic
tendencies the new scientific study of anatomy would be eagerly entered into.
These lecture-halls, with their busts and pictures of professors, with their
collection of minerals, stuffed animals, human skeletons, and curiosities,
were practically museums of natural history that were visited with interest by
the inhabitants of the town.  This is shown in an engraving by W. Swanenburgh,
dated 1610, representing the Theatre of Anatomy, Leyden.  The professor, in a
central space, stands at the dissecting-table, on which are the opened bodies.
Along the line of seats are arranged the curiosities of all kinds; for
instance, a human skeleton riding a skeleton horse, and two other skeletons
arranged to represent Eve giving Adam the apple beneath a tree.  Other
skeletons hold banners with Latin mottoes, such as "Nascentes morimur," "Mors
ultima linea rerum." Surgical instruments are carefully elaborated lying under
a glass care.  And in the body of the hall visitors - men and women - are
moving and looking about; to one lady a professor is showing a flayed human
skin, at which she looks with a polite interest that denotes a total lack of
imagination.  We are told that even the country-folk made these halls one of
the "sights" to see on market-days.  A French traveller, Mons. le Monconys,
visited Leyden in 1663, and in his Journal (published at Lyons in 1677)
describes the Theatre of Anatomy as "very pretty, shaped like an amphitheatre
of wood, very clean," and as containing "an infinity of skeletons of men and
animals and several rarities."

     For seven years Rembrandt remained in Leyden, and "practised painting
alone and according to his own mind." We know that he worked steadily in his
father's house.  A temperament mentally solitary, experimental, questing, he
did not care to live alone.  The tenor of his life has shown this; throughout
he needed the sympathetic companionship and protective care of woman; his
mother, his sister Lysbeth, Saskia, Hendrickje tended him one after the other.
This is probably a reason why he worked in his father's house and, as far as
we know, did not set up a separate studio of his own.  Nor, indeed, was it yet
necessary, for he had his models at hand beside him daily: his mother, his
father, his sister, and still more important to him at that period, himself.
With an endless curiosity he watched the well-known faces, and studied in his
own the varied emotions he saw; he painted the grave placidity of expression
and control of the women and of the older man; then turned to his own mirror
and analysed one expression after another on his own face - laughter, anger,
inquiry, repose, even vacancy of expression - admirable exercises that bore
such remarkable after-fruit.  His own portraits - drawn, etched, and painted -
give a deeper insight into the spiritual biography of the man than any series
of facts can do.  He began this practice in Leyden, when his face was yet
unlined, when outlook and expectancy showed through the bright, clear eyes,
before emotion and suffering had traced their lines on his rugged, plebeian
face, with its thick nose and sensitive mouth.  From the first he was a
pioneer who ceaselessly strove to solve the great problems of human life, and
of beneficent light, to him the symbol of all life.  Naturally his earliest
work is experimental, akin in manner and manipulation to that of his
contemporaries.  He was precocious and open-minded, original and confident, he
nevertheless turned to the great ones in art to learn from them all he could.
His mania for collecting seems to have been coincident with his first
earnings, for he early possessed a set of engravings by the Lorraine artist,
Callot - etchings and engravings would obviously be the first form of art to
come within his reach, and as soon as his own etchings became of any value, he
used to exchange them for those of other artists.

     Rembrandt's two earliest-known paintings date from 1627: "The
Money-Changer," in the Berlin Gallery, and "St. Paul in Prison," in the
Stuttgart Museum.  The latter picture, for which he proudly received a few
guilder, was sold in 1867 for 4,000 francs.  Both are carefully studied and
finished, painted under contemporary influences, and in no wise remarkable.
An indication of his maturer insight into character is suggested by the
serious intentness of St. Paul's face; the candlelight arrangement in the
"Money-Changer" he borrowed from Honthorst and others, whom he later wholly
eclipsed by his treatment of chiaroscuro.  In his early work he strives after
forcible dramatic effects to express strong emotion, not having yet learned to
express it through the suggestion of deep inner feeling in his subjects.  The
psychological aspect of life and its expression appealed to him later.

     There is a touch of originality in the conception of the small "Christ at
Emmaus" (1629), now in the possession of Mme. E. Andre at Paris.  The light is
focussed in such wise on one startled disciple and on the wall behind that the
long magician-like figure of the revealed Christ is silhouetted as a grey
shadow against the wall, a slanting line from head to floor, where crouches
the second disciple.  An answering note of grey is the grey coat hung on the
wall; and there is an exquisite bit of genre painting in the background, where
the housewife is busy at the fire, unconscious of the pregnant moment.  A
similar use of a slanting line of strong colour, to express dignity, is shown
in the "Rape of Proserpine," painted about 1631.

     "The Supper at Emmaus" was a favourite subject that Rembrandt both etched
and painted.  The change from the tentative effort of youth with its forced
dramatic sentiment to the full maturity of technique and power of expression
is markedly realised by the comparison of the little picture of 1629 with the
beautiful "Christ at Emmaus" (in the Louvre) of 1648, so simple and admirable
in composition, with the light radiating to the white cloth from the head of
the Breaker of Bread, with his wonderful eyes and rapt expression, from whom
there breathes the revealed essence of Divinity.

     The earliest examples of group composition date from 1628: "St. Paul
seated at a Writingtable," now at Nuremberg, "St. Peter among the Servants of
the High Priest," in a private collection at Berlin, and "Samson's Capture by
the Philistines," at Berlin, signed with the letters "R. H. L." (Rembrandt
Harmenszoon, Leyden).  To this year, also, belongs probably the earliest known
painting of himself, entitled "Rembrandt with the Disordered Hair," and one of
his mother, in the collection of Dr. Bredius in the Hague Museum, executed
with timidity and elaborate care.  The earliest known etchings date also to
1628: a head of his mother, a portrait of himself bareheaded, and "A man on
Horseback," signed "R. H." A comparison of the work of 1628 shows that his
power as an etcher was in advance of his possibilities as a painter.  He is
more certain with the needle, and at greater ease with his medium;
consequently there is finer characterisation in the etched portrait of his
mother than in the painted one.

     In the following year, 1629, Rembrandt made his first essay with the
pyramidal form of composition.  If, in "Judas bringing back the Thirty Pieces
of Silver," in the collection of Baron Schickler, there is exaggerated
emphasis in the pose of the traitor writhing in remorse before the High
Priest, there is, nevertheless, spiritual conviction and dramatic power. "The
Old Man Asleep by a Fireside," in the Turin Gallery, attributed to Rembrandt's
fellow-student Lievens, is considered by Dr. Bredius and Herr Hofstede de
Groot to be probably by Rembrandt, since it compares well in technique and
portraiture with a small portrait by him of the miller in cap and red feather,
belonging to Mr. W. B. Chamberlain, Brighton.  It is important to note that at
the outset of the painter's development he began the long series of fine
characteristic portraits that occupied him throughout his life; and that to
1630 belongs the remarkable signed "Head of an Old Man," in the Cassel
Gallery, showing psychological insight.  Of greater importance, if less fine
as a painting, is one of the early painted portraits of himself, "Rembrandt
with the Steel Gorget," 1629-30, now at the Hague, with large clear eyes and
serene, inexperienced face - the first of the extraordinary series of intimate
painted portraits which forms a better biography of the painter than any
published writing.  He used the steel gorget, and in "St. Peter among the
Servants of the High Priest" a suit of armour - his earliest studio properties
- as a method of focussing the light.  This biblical subject is a forerunner
of many executed with brush or with etching-needle, treated from a personal
point of view.  A close student of the Bible, Rembrandt sought for a
convincing and independent interpretation through the actualities of his day
and hour.  The framework of the well-known, well-loved biblical stories
remains the same; but the conventions of the Roman Catholic tradition are
discarded by him for the simple presentment of themes that Protestantism
required, expressed through the medium of the familiar heartfelt events of
daily life.  In this early picture Dutch boors are introduced, and a man in
contemporary armour, for the painter was studying all types and conditions of
men who came in his way, all manners of dress, tricks of pose and movement.
With his etchings he was daily learning to abbreviate details and to make
complete studies aside from the study of colours.  He made several etchings of
beggars that swarmed in the cities; beggars by trade and beggars through
fortune of war, crippled, tattered, blind, admirable studies of humanity in
the rough.  The earliest examples, "A Beggar Warming his Hands over a
Chafing-dish," and "A Beggar, a Sketch," date about 1629.  To this year, also,
belongs also one of his earliest drawings of himself - a bust portrait - in
the British Museum, of special interest when compared with his "Rembrandt
Bareheaded," for it will be seen how superior the rapid drawing is to the
etched portrait.  1630 was a year of great importance in the artist's career;
in it he began to emerge from the immaturities of studentship to greater
security of hand and purpose, towards mastership.  To it belong some admirable
portraits of his mother - lovingly treated, faithful, pathetic; for instance,
"His Mother in a Black Hood," in Mr. A. Sanderson's collection at Edinburgh,
"Mother Reading," belonging to the Earl of Pembroke, and another portrait of
her in the Windsor Collection, wearing a large velvet hood richly embroidered
inside.  He also etched his own head five times, and that of his father four
times.

     Several important group compositions date to 1630; notably the beautiful
etchings "Christ Disputing with the Doctors," and "Simeon in the Temple,"
similar to the ink and bistre drawing of the same subject in the British
Museum.  Both the etching and the drawing were obviously preliminary studies
for the painting "The Presentation in the Temple," Rembrandt's finest
achievement in 1631.  To the previous year belong also the interesting plate
known as "The Little Circumcision" and the sketch in red chalk, in the British
Museum, entitled "The Entombment of Christ," and considered to have originally
been a composition for "The Raising of Lazarus." Three important paintings of
Rembrandt's Leyden period have completely disappeared - "Lot and his
Daughters," "The Baptism of the Eunuch," and "St. Jerome at Prayer." Some idea
of their style and composition is given in Van Vliets' engravings after the
originals, dated 1631; and though it is impossible to judge the excellence of
Rembrandt's execution, the engravings attest to extraordinary care in the
finish of details.  Judged by the greater freedom of execution the "St. Jerome
at Prayer" is evidently the later of the three pictures, and for it the
painter made a careful drawing in red chalk, now in the Louvre.

     The exact date of Rembrandt's removal to Amsterdam is not known, but it
is generally supposed that his Leyden period terminated in 1631.  We learn,
however, from recently discovered documents in the Archives of Holland, that
in the summer of 1631 he was still living in his father's house, but that he
was domiciled in Amsterdam in 1632.  So that if he moved to the capital it
must have been in the latter end of 1631.  Owing to this uncertainty, it is
difficult to decide which of his works of that year were executed in Leyden,
which in Amsterdam.  It is, therefore, simpler to classify all the work of
1631 as belonging to the Leyden period, and thus separate his life into three
distinct periods divided by the years 1632, the year of his marriage to Saskia
and of the "Anatomy Lesson," and 1642, the year of "The Night Watch" and of
the death of Saskia.  "The Rape of Proserpine" and "Lot and his Daughters"
date prior to his marriage, and both belong in treatment to his early period.
For at this point of his development his work shows curious inequalities.
Side by side with admirable studies of beggars, tramps, still-life, etched or
drawn, are group-subjects, which reveal the still youthful student in the
manner of the composition, in the relative treatment of foreground and
background and in the suggestion of emotion.  In the "Rape of Proserpine," for
example, where details of foreground are carefully painted with realistic
skill, the expression of emotion is forced and theatrical rather than
dramatic.  The young man had as yet insufficient personal acquaintance with
the joys and sorrows of life to enable him to conceive his subject from
within; moreover, mythological subjects had no real attraction for him, and
belonged to a form of culture that did not appeal to him.  In these
compositions he is still under the influence of Lastman, corrected, however,
by a reminiscence of Poussin, whose work he knew through engravings.  His
development proceeded along two main channels: portraiture or study of the
individual, commissioned or otherwise; and biblical subjects, used less for
their stories as such than as studies of groups of people swayed by a single
or dominant emotion, as a means of expressing the ideas and needs of his own
class and their less lettered brethren, as the interpretation of the elemental
passions of simple hearts.  The latter tendency is first shown in "The Holy
Family in the Carpenter's Shop," in the Pinacothek at Munich - a forerunner in
sentiment of Holman Hunt's "Shadow of the Cross." This beautiful "Holy Family"
represents a young Dutch Mary sitting with her babe on her lap.  The little
Dutch Christ, wrapped in a fur cloak, has fallen away from her breast in
contented sleep, his feet warmed in her hand, and behind the cradle is seen
the strong fine figure of Joseph, reminiscent, perhaps, of the conventional
Italian type.  There are no outward signs of divinity; it is a simple trinity
of human life made one by the sanctity of love; the divinity lies in the
innocence of the child, in the protective love of motherhood.

     Chief in importance in 1631, however, ranks the exquisite small
"Presentation in the Temple," now at the Hague, not only for the great beauty
of its gem-like painting, but because it is the first of the wonderful series
of pictures in which chiaroscuro is used as the vehicle of highest and most
poetical emotion, for the expression of the painter's individuality, personal
interpretation and impressions of the problems of life.

     There are points of similarity between this picture and an etching of the
subject made in 1630, probably a preliminary study.  In both is the elaborate
architecture touched with points of light as with jewels glittering in
swimming shadow; in both is the great flight of steps in the background
thronged with people.  There are differences in the grouping of the principal
figures, and the painting is the finer realisation.  In it the light pours
down from an unseen window upon the head, shoulders, and outstretched right
hand of the High Priest, and falls on the kneeling figures of the
white-bearded Simeon, the Babe, and on the placid white figure of Mary with
Lysbeth's face.  The radiance from the Child's head illumines the boor-like
figures of two spectators.  The manipulation is fine and finished in the
manner of the Dutch school of the day.  The originality is in the treatment of
chiaroscuro.

     Rembrandt's personal handling developed out of his conscientious
self-training, his mastery of the known laws of painting, his interest in the
tendencies of his notable contemporaries, his realistic study of nature, and
especially out of his ceaseless observation of the play of light and shade.
His excellent workmanship, a marked characteristic of the Dutch race, admitted
of no slovenliness.  Painting was a trade, a handicraft, and the painters
prided themselves on the perfection of their technique as the necessary means
for personal expression.

     From the first Rembrandt was an expert craftsman; his patient training
resulted in a reliable subjection of hand to mind, a reliance of mind on hand
which alone could produce masterly work of a high quality combined with
individual expression.  Throughout his life he continued the realistic study
of objects for the training of eye and hand, even as late as 1650, to which
year belongs the etching of the Damier, or Shell.  Definite character in
brushwork showed itself first in the study of single heads, when the mind was
concentrated on one object, one impression, when the hand was free to follow
the lead of the mind unimpeded by exigences of grouping and composition.  The
first evidence of personal handling is seen strongly in the Cassel head of an
old man in a black cap, where the impasto is thick and the definite strokes of
the brush visible.  Nevertheless the head is still mask-like against the rim
of the cap and the background, which is behind the head and in no sense
environs it.  The question of a head in relation to the planes of the picture,
of the head well within the luminous atmosphere of the environment and not
looking out of the frame, is successfully treated in the more mature "Portrait
of a Polish Nobleman," in the Hermitage, in which dryness of skin surface
gives place to roundness of muscle and texture of the skin with its wonderful
light-reflecting property.  The character of fierceness suggested by eyebrows
and moustaches is further emphasised by the high jewelled bearskin hat, by the
fur round the collarless neck, and by the particular sweeps of the brush in
working in the light of the luminous background against which the dark edge of
the left cheek and chin is shown.  The whole scale of tones is very rich and
warm.

     Another portrait belonging to 1631, and probably also painted in
Amsterdam, is that of Maurits Huygens, secretary of the Hague State Council,
and brother to the distinguished statesman and poet, Constantine Huygens.  To
the latter we owe our scant knowledge regarding Rembrandt's position as an
artist in Leyden from the point of view of his contemporaries, and from an
undoubtedly credible source.  In this lately discovered autobiography
Constantine Huijgens records his impressions of Rembrandt's Leyden work; and
he refers to "Judas Bringing Back the Thirty Pieces of Silver" as not a recent
work.  He throws new light on Rembrandt's position among his fellow-countrymen
at this stage, when he records his own impression of Rembrandt "as the
greatest painter of the coming age," and adds that Rembrandt's work was even
then engraved by van Vliet (who was a pupil of Rembrandt), Savery, and others.
He also tells us that "the manner in which Rembrandt harmonised the theatrical
and often coarse characteristics, the exaggerated lights, the fantastic
costumes then in vogue, and gave dramatic force to his compositions by
dazzling effects of light, aroused the respect and admiration of his
countrymen."

     A Dutch poet, in a book published in 1630, also speaks of the young
painter as an instance of precocity, and in disproof of the doctrine of
heredity, describes him "beardless yet already famous . . . made of other
flour than his father."