In 1661, the Amsterdam city council commissioned Rembrandt to complete a painting for the newly built city hall. The resulting work, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was rejected and returned to the painter. The surviving fragment is only a fraction of the whole work which was originally the largest he ever painted, at around five by five metres in the shape of a lunette.

Rembrandt was educated at the University of Leyden, and received his first lessons in art there.

In 1634, shortly before he became famous, Rembrandt married Saskia van Uylenburg, whom he often portrayed in his works. The young couple lived together happily for eight years until Saskia's death in 1642.

In 1631, at the age of 24, Rembrandt settled in Amsterdam and began an independent career as a painter, never leaving that city until his death, 39 years later.

Carel Fabritius was Rembrandt's most outstanding pupil: he was a brilliant experimental artist whose exceptional reputation rests on a handful of surviving paintings. He apprenticed himself to Rembrandt from 1641 to 1643.

Rembrandt spent 3 years as a student of the painter Jacob Van Swanenburch. Having mastered everything he had been taught, he then spent another 6 months studying with Pieter Lastman, known for his historical paintings, in Amsterdam.

Titus, Rembrandt's only surviving child by his wife ,would later become his favorite portrait subject. Rembrandt and Saskia van Uylenburghhad had several other children who died in infancy, and he later had a daughter with his mistress.

The Night Watch (or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq) was commissioned for the new hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the musketeer branch of the civic militia. The painting caused quite a stir because it departed from convention which required that such genre pieces should be stately and formal.

Rembrandt died in 1669, at the age of 63, and was buried in Amsterdam at the public expense.

The unfinished painting found on his easel the day after Rembrandt died was of an old man holding an infant. It is called Simeon with the Christ Child in the Temple, a subject he had painted twice before, much earlier in his career. The final treatment of this subject is quite different, stripped down to its essentials, with a muted palette and no pageantry or onlookers -- just an old man and a baby, with another figure behind them in shadow.