Search results for ""Author Onno Blom""

Rembrandt's life has always been an enigma. How did a miller's son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist in the world? With his formative years shrouded in mystery, the only remaining evidence of Rembrandt's life as a young man is his work. Deeply rooted in the turbulent changes that his hometown was undergoing, Rembrandt's early paintings tell a fascinating story of artistic evolution against the backdrop of the widening horizons of Leiden's cultural and commercial life during the Dutch Golden Age. Leiden's good fortune facilitated Rembrandt's. But who was that young man inventing himself as the city around him grew and prospered? How did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? To find out, Leiden native Onno Blom immersed himself in the world, the country, the city and the house in which Rembrandt was born in 1606 and where he spent the first twenty-five years of his life. 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 his genius.

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Rembrandt van Rijn’s early years are as famously shrouded in mystery as Shakespeare’s, and his life has always been an enigma. How did a miller’s son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist of his age? How in short, did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? Seeking the roots of Rembrandt’s genius, the celebrated 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. It was a turbulent time, the city having only recently rebelled against the Spanish. There are almost no written records by or about Rembrandt, so Blom tracked down old maps, sought out the Rembrandt family house and mill, and walked the route that Rembrandt would have taken to school. Leiden was a bustling center of intellectual life, and Blom, a native of Leiden himself, brings to life all the places Rembrandt would have known: the university, library, botanical garden, and anatomy theater. He investigated the concerns and tensions of the era: burial rites for plague victims, the renovation of the city in the wake of the Spanish siege, the influx of immigrants to work the cloth trade. And he examined the origins and influences that led to the famous and beloved paintings that marked the beginning of Rembrandt’s celebrated career as the paramount painter of the Dutch Golden Age. Young Rembrandt is a fascinating portrait of the artist and the world that made him. Evocatively told and beautifully illustrated with more than 100 color images, it is a superb biography that captures Rembrandt for a new generation.

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