"A captivating exploration of the little-known story of Rembrandt's formative years by a prize-winning biographer. Rembrandt van Rijn's early years are as famously shrouded in mystery as Shakespeare's, and his life has always been an enigma. How did a miller's son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist of his age? How in short, did Rembrandt become Rembrandt? Seeking the roots of Rembrandt's genius, the celebrated Dutch writer Onno...

Though completely unappreciated during his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most recognizable names in the art world today. Though it would make sense that Van Gogh's life would be greatly undocumented, this is not the case. "The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh" is a collection of the correspondences between Van Gogh and his brother, Theo, that gives an incredibly enthralling look into the life of this genius. Tormented by loss of...

"'I believe in the absolute necessity of a new art of colour, of drawing and--of the artistic life,' Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1888. 'And if we work in that faith, it seems to me that there's a chance that our hopes won't be in vain. 'His prediction would come true. In his brief and explosively creative life--he committed suicide a few years later at the age of thirty-seven--Van Gogh made us see the world in a new way. His shining...

The unvarnished story of the world's most famous art forger and Europe's pre-WWII black market, told in "profoundly researched, focused, absorbing depth" (The New Yorker). It's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War II: A lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering in mockery of the Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever...