Rembrandt's story as artist and as a human being can be understood only in the context of the new conventional Dutch middle class and their showy, though restricted tastes. He is the most spiritual emanation of an nonspiritual age. In him, the things of the soul are united with a mundane and humanitarian outlook that makes his art unique. Whereas Vermeer gives his middle class characters an elegant and impressive appearance, Rembrandt heightens the qualities of the spirit, yet brings these close to the interests of the ordinary man. In a period of intense materialism, his art is a reminder of other values, a symbol of the conscience of mankind.

The son of a Leyden miller, he absorbed a simplicity and strength from family readings of the Testaments. He attended Latin school and entered the university, but he had no taste for learning. He was apprenticed to a local painter whose chief distinction was that he had been to Italy. After six months with a second teacher, Rembrandt left to work on his own. By the age of twenty-one he had begun to attract followers, and he left for Amsterdam, launched on a professional career as a portrait painter. This early manner, dignified, detailed and clear, guaranteed his popularity. Painting pictures of the well-to-do was the chief way for an artist to make a living in those days and Rembrandt did exceptionally well. He married Saskia van Uylenborch, bought a beautiful home, and furnished it lavishly.

The death of his wife in 1642 and the poor response to the innovations of his Night Watch combined to turn the worldly Rembrandt away from the mainstream of Dutch art. He had been moving in a new direction even before this; the Night Watch itself was a climax. It was an attempt to add dramatic meaning to the group portrait of a company of civic guards. Unfortunately these people were accustomed to being painted in photographic fashion with everything clear-cut and straightforward. They were surprised at this mysteriously glowing picture in which some persons could be seen plainly, while others were bathed in a shadowy light.

Although he arose out of the middle class tradition, Rembrandt now cut himself off from it. He developed a subjective art featuring Biblical and classical subjects with their great human and spiritual possibilities. His painting became increasingly expressive rather than precise and descriptive. This fact made him less acceptable as an artist, while his non-blessed relationship with his housekeeper Hendrickje Stoeffels made him less presentable socially. However, Rembrandt remained an important factor in the art of Holland and influenced many others in his direction. In spite of his bankruptcy in 1657, he continued to paint prodigiously and even received occasional official commissions like the Syndics of the Cloth Guild. He lived now in an obscure quarter on the outskirts of the city. The fine house had been sold; his library of etchings and drawings disposed of, "collected by Rembrandt himself with much love and care," said the auctioneer's catalog. The paintings of the latter part of his life show no outward signs of the material impoverishment and physical disintegration of the man. Done with a marvelous subtlety of glowing golden-toned color they are wholly concerned with analyzing and projecting the state of the soul.

The Self-Portrait (below), like Rembrandt's many estimates of himself in etching, drawing, and painting, is a generalized rather than photographic work. Everything is subordinated to the interpretation of character. Details are omitted in the form itself; it barely emerges from the background, because of the dark under-painting and the way in which the light is held within the picture. Only the face is luminous. Thus, Rembrandt represents the climax of the Caravaggio tradition of spotlighting the area to which the painter wishes to call attention.

Rembrandt, however, was no longer interested in the kind of melodramatic picture he had done earlier. What is important is the meaningful probing glance of the eyes, directed toward and beyond us as the artist looks off into infinite space and his form melts into unknown space behind him. Although the painter here displays general Baroque techniques, he is not trying to arouse pity or fear through the violent projection of a three-dimensional figure or through agonies of body and lighting. All of Rembrandt's pictures in this culmination of his career poses a psychological or a philosophical problem. Here he presents an aging individual whose circumstances have changed markedly and who yet is able to think about life with neither self-pity nor despair.

For Rembrandt, the Bible was a living thing from which the lessons of life could be learned. In the Pilate Washing His Hands, done a few years before the painter's death, he poses the ever-present problem of social responsibility. His interpretation of this moment reveals the profundity of his insight. A life is at stake but so is the position of the man to whom the people appeal for judgment and to whom the mob outside howls for blood. Pilate is a tired, cynical old gentleman whose shadowed face exposes the sharp nose and chin and the tight lips. He symbolically washes his hands of the whole matter. It would be risky to involve himself here, and he will have none of it. Behind him stands an old man symbolizing age and experience; before him is the youthful figure of innocence who pours the water. The lad's hands and body tie the man who turns his back on responsibility to the brutal mob lusting for its victim.

A sweeping arc, moving from the lower left up and around to the lower right, is set off against the rectangular building and the opening beyond. Light now comes not from any perceptible source, as in ordinary Baroque painting, but from little pinpoints of light within the glowing rich and darker mass of the figures themselves. It is not a real, but rather a spiritual radiance which illumines his characters with a unique and universal meaning. It endures as a symbol of his profound feeling for mankind.