Rembrandt is generally regarded as one of the greatest artists in the history of Western painting — the central figure of the Dutch Golden Age, the most original portraitist of his century, and the printmaker whose etchings remain a foundational reference for every artist working in the medium since.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) was a Dutch painter, draftsman, and printmaker, widely considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art. Born in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, the son of a miller and the heir of a Dutch Reformed family, he attended the Latin School in Leiden from about 1616 to 1620 and was briefly enrolled at the University of Leiden before leaving to apprentice with the painter Jacob van Swanenburg for three years. A subsequent six-month apprenticeship with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman exposed him to Italian Baroque influences and to the dramatic lighting and compositional approach that would define his mature work.
After establishing his reputation in Leiden in the late 1620s, he moved permanently to Amsterdam around 1631, lodging with the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh and marrying Uylenburgh's cousin Saskia in 1634. Across the next four decades he produced what is now estimated as some 250–300 paintings, approximately 300 etchings, and hundreds of drawings, including the largest body of self-portraits — roughly seventy-five — produced by any artist before the modern period. His work is held in essentially every major museum of Western art, including the Rijksmuseum (which holds The Night Watch, his most famous painting), the Mauritshuis, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Hermitage, and the Museum Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam, his former home.