PanThe Spectator (UK)It is heavily illustrated, with 100 colour photographs placed throughout the text, in a neat, reader-friendly format. Unfortunately, at least three full-page digital images have been enlarged beyond their capacity, resulting in an ugly break-up of legibility ... Young Rembrandt is really a historical memoir of the city of Leiden, written by a Dutch author seeking to explain the artist through the context of his native city ... Blom’s strategy of digression is by now the warp and weft of his text: he gives us a potted history of Leiden University, its library, its botanical garden, its collection of curiosities, its anatomy theatre and its most famous alumni ... Young Rembrandt seems to have been built upon the theory that if you describe everything around your subject, you will somehow illuminate the mysterious centre. But it doesn’t work: Rembrandt is still the dark star at the hub of the Dutch art world.
