Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69), the son of a well-to-do miller from the university town of Leiden, was by the age of 26 Holland's most celebrated painter and has remained an artist of universal appeal. Rembrandt made his name in Amsterdam, capital of the newly independent Dutch Republic and, as the centre of a global trade empire, a magnet for merchants, writers and artists. No one understood its possibilities better than Rembrandt, or captured its...