Lives of Rembrandt

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (c.1606-1669) was the most talked-about painter of the 17^th-century - and quite possibly of the following centuries too. His prodigious talent, extraordinary emotional truth, and reckless disregard of artistic convention astonished, delighted and often dismayed his contemporaries; and the full gamut of these reactions is revealed in the three early biographies published here for the first time in their entirety in English. Sandrart, a German painter and writer on painting, actually knew Rembrandt in Amsterdam; Baldinucci, also an artist contemporary with Rembrandt, was one of the greatest early connoisseurs of prints; and Arnold Houbraken, who studied under some of Rembrandt''s pupils, wrote the earliest major biographical account of the artists of Holland. These extraordinary documents give a vivid picture of Rembrandt''s shattering impact on the art world of his time - not only as a painter, but as a supremely successful manipulator of the m