aits began to stream in upon him from
the citizens of his native town. These he executed well, but his heart
was not wrapped up in the portrayal of character as John Van Eyck's
had been. Neither was it in the drawing of delicate and beautiful lines
that he wished to excel, as did Holbein and Raphael. He was the
dramatist of painting, a man who would rather paint some one person
ten times over in the character of somebody else, high priest, king,
warrior, or buffoon, than once thoroughly in his own. But when people
ordered portraits of themselves they wanted good likenesses, and
Rembrandt was happy to supply them. At first it was only when he was
working at home to please himself that he indulged his picturesque
gift. He painted his father, his mother, and himself over and over
again, but in each picture he tried some experiment with expression,
or a new pose, or a strange effect of lighting, transforming the general
aspect of the original. His own face did as well as any other to
experiment with; none could be offended with the result, and it was
always to be had without paying a model's price for the sitting. Thus
all through his life, from twenty-two to sixty-three, we can follow
the growth of his art with the transformation of his body, in the long
series of pictures of his single self.

More than any artist that had gone before him, Rembrandt was fascinated
by the problem of light. The brightest patch of white on a canvas will
look black if you hold it up against the sky. How, then, can the fire
of sunshine be depicted at all? Experience shows that it can only be
suggested by contrast with shadows almost black. But absolutely black
shadows would not be beautiful. Fancy a picture in which the shadows
were as black as well-polished boots! Rembrandt had to find out how
to make his dark shadows rich, and how to make a picture, in which
shadow predominated, a beautiful thing in itself, a thing that would
decorate a wall as well as depict the chosen subject. That was no easy
problem, and he had to solve it for himself. It was his life's work.
He applied his new idea in the painting of portraits and in subject
pictures, chiefly illustrative of dramatic incidents in Bible history,
for the same quality in him that made him love the flare of light,
made him also love the dramatic in life.

Rembrandt's mother was a Protestant, who brought up her son with a
thorough knowledge of the Scripture stories, and it was the Bible that