Rembrandt and Dutch Portraiture (Great Artists Series)

Rembrandt: Life of a Portrait Painter is one of the first in Barron's Great Artists series. It seems, at first, like the wonderful Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness books, with close-ups, bits of separate text under cameos, and all kinds of pictures. A color photograph of the Taj Mahal is included, for example, in the section titled "The Artist and His Times" because it was built in 1631. Small in format, this book nevertheless packs at least five images to a layout and then frames the pages with crayonlike lines. So while there are many well-chosen pictures, including all of Rembrandt's most moving portraits, there is an overstuffed look to almost every two-page spread, and the reproductions are very small. David Spence is an entertaining writer who can turn a juicy phrase--he refers to "the macabre novelty of the occasion" of the dissection of a corpse, as shown in The Anatomy Lesson. His text is more complex than a grade-school child could comprehend, but young teens would find this narrative tantalizing; readers learn about Rembrandt's mistress and his common-law wife, as well as the artist's bankruptcy conviction and a few other down-to-earth problems. Still, somehow Rembrandt's tenderness and genius glow. --Peggy Moorman