Simon Schama is primarily a historian, not an art pundit, and it was probably his research into the Dutch 17th century which led him to the central personality of Rembrandt van Rijn. The son of a miller, Rembrandt aimed high and rose high, though without quite becoming the kind of painter-prince represented by Rubens - who, so Schama thinks, was his real inspiration and envy. Though certain respected older scholars have cocked a snook, Schama seems perfectly at home in art of the Baroque Age and in the bourgeois, competitive, highly commercial world of Amsterdam in its golden era. However, the density of the research and the rather stop-go quality of the narrative make it, at times, slightly ponderous to read. Nevertheless, an important book in more senses than a purely art-historical one.