Many painted
the things around them as they looked to a commonplace mind, with no
glamour and no transforming touch. When we see their pictures, our
eyes are not opened to new effects. We continue to see and to feel
as we did before, but we admire the honest work, the pleasant colour,
and the efficiency of the painters. In default of Raphaels, Giorgiones,
and Titians, we should be pleased to hang upon our walls works such
as those. But towering above the other artists of Holland, great and
small, was one Dutchman, Rembrandt, who holds his own with the greatest
of the world.
He was born in 1606, the son of a miller at Leyden, who gave him the
best teaching there to be had. Soon he became a good painter of
likenesses, and orders for portraits 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.
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