'In the very beginning," said Alberto Manguel, talking about his book Reading Pictures at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, "there was nothing but the picture itself". And then as we look again "what we see is the painting translated through our experience".

Visual art is an often neglected beast during the Edinburgh Festivals. The galleries put on excellent exhibitions, but they all too often get lost in the plethora of other activities going on. One way to ensure that they don't go unnoticed is to tie in with one of the Festivals - as was done by the National Gallery of Scotland when they asked five authors appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to give their personal responses to their favourite images in the Rembrandt's Women exhibition.

This is the first time that Rembrandt's women have been on display in such numbers and in such a way. Twenty-seven paintings, along with 48 etchings and 44 drawings, are all laid out chronologically, charting Rembrandt's love affair with women. There were three of great importance in his life - his wife Saskia, who died young; his possible lover Geertje Dircks, who sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was eventually consigned to a House of Correction; and the servant girl, Hendrickje Stoffels, condemned as his "whore" by the church courts and who gave him a daughter.

Although there are no authenticated portraits of Geertje and Hendrickje (there is one of Saskia) this does not stop people from trying to associate each of the women with particular paintings. There is only one painting, however, where any of the three could have been the woman portrayed (because of a confusion over dates) and that is A Woman in Bed, which was chosen by two of the authors invited to talk about their favourite painting.

Edwina Currie picked this picture because she knew that it was the inspiration for the whole exhibition. Currie says that in this picture Rembrandt has epitomised "all the women in the world who have waited for a man in bed." Like the novelist she is, she describes the woman in the picture.

"Rembrandt liked his women, at this time in his life, fair-skinned, round-faced and jolly. She's a bit like an Edam cheese, redolent of butter and milk."

Currie likes to think that the painting is of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia, who has gone to bed and is waiting for her husband to join her. There could be many stories associated with the picture - "once you start to look at it you can see more than one possible story in it." But which ever story you choose, Currie says, "I think she's absolutely gorgeous and he's a lucky fellow. And that's exactly what Rembrandt wants you to feel." She says that he uses many of the same techniques as a writer. "Everything curves like a peach about to ripen. So sensual - you can almost taste that skin and you know that Rembrandt the man has done exactly that."

Currie was the first to mention that critics and modern day observers may think that Rembrandt's women are too fat and almost too real, with all their lumps and bumps. Certainly Jenny ╔clair, who also talked about this picture, described many of the women painted by Rembrandt as "hideous old boilers".

She liked the historical story behind A Woman in Bed, which may be the story of Tobias and Sarah. This story, from the apocryphal Book of Tobit, tells of how the devil Asmodeus slew each of Sarah's seven husbands on their wedding night. She was destined always to be a bride but never a wife until, with the help of the archangel Raphael, Tobias was able to put Asmodeus to flight. The painting could be showing Sarah looking out at the sound of a footstep, waiting to see if her husband is going to come to her bed for the first time.

╔clair did like Rembrandt's line etchings and some of his erotic drawings, or as she termed them, "the grubby ones, the hidden Rembrandts". She also thought there was a "great one of a woman holding a child having a huge tantrum". It was interesting, she said, to see a 16th-century tantrum and to discover that such things hadn't changed at all.

Dame Beryl Bainbridge also spoke about the line drawings and particularly those associated with children. She picked, in particular, a red chalk picture that shows two women helping a small child to learn to walk. It was the everyday nature of the drawings that she was attracted to, the fact that he was dealing with normal childhood activities. Having just watched one of her grandchildren learn to walk she thought that "to produce something so moving, so life-like, so real, is amazing."

Bainbridge also talked about the nature of genius. "When you think about these paintings you wonder what on earth genius is. Why are these pictures so amazing?" It could be because, as Marina Warner stated, Rembrandt "is so concerned with breathing life into dusty subjects". She says that his figures are "nothing like marble goddesses" because he had an "extraordinary human touch". Warner was talking about the image of Flora. There are three Floras in this exhibition, all painted at different stages in Rembrandt's life, using different models and different styles of dress. As Warner said, "the real woman is glimpsed through the goddess." She said that we are so accustomed to "living in a universe packed with idealised images" and that's why we can find them difficult to look at - they are almost "too present in their flesh".

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown also picked up on this point, saying that she "sometimes envies the women who lived at that time" because "they could have their lumps and bumps" and their stomachs and fertility were celebrated. She pointed out that flat stomachs are now worshipped, which is interesting since we are living in an age where childlessness is becoming an increasing problem. The painting that she chose to comment on was Susanna and the Elders. She tied this in with some elements of current Muslim culture. She claimed that "this picture is about a whole set of values and that's why I responded to it the way I did". Two elders spy upon Susanna as she is bathing in her husband's garden and threaten to ruin her name. Susanna's gaze makes the audience complicit in her predicament, as she is gazing straight out of the painting and her shame and embarrassment are plain to see. Alibhai-Brown said that the threat of having a "spoilt name" was still prevalent in many parts of the world. "This isn't 17th-century to me at all, this is here and now," she said.

There are ongoing arguments about how much of his personal life Rembrandt put in his public paintings. Which woman in his life is portrayed in which picture? Which story lies behind each painting? Does it matter? As these speakers all prove, what matters is your response to the work.

Rembrandt's Women continues at the National Gallery of Scotland until September 2nd, then moves to the Royal Academy, London, from September 22nd - December 16th