Simon Schama - Rembrandt's Eyes. Gift book bound in leather.

"Rembrandt's Eyes"

An unsurpassed master of popular historical narrative, Simon Schama, with the brilliance of a professional novelist and the scrupulousness of a professional historian, creates a dynamic and voluminous image of the Netherlands of the XVII century – the times when Rembrandt van Rijn, a native of Leiden, triumphantly demonstrated what heights Dutch painting can achieve, for many centuries won the title of the greatest of painters. The few documented information that has come down to our days about the artist's life and professional activities are masterfully woven into the motley fabric of a vast and diverse historical context. Commercial turmoil and political intrigues, the confrontation of the Spanish Habsburgs and the Dutch Republic, Catholics and Protestants, the flourishing of the democratic art of the Netherlands and the sparkling painting of the "artist of kings" Rubens – a seething, bizarre world where the art of Modern times was born. The world that has become the stage of the life and work of the Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn, an artist whose painting seems to triumph over reality.