This richly illustrated collection of essays represents the fruit of a life-long occupation with Rembrandt on the part of one of the foremost authorities on Dutch and Flemish art. Concentrating on either a single painting or an iconographically related group of paintings, Julius S. Held examines the processes, some perhaps even unconscious, that underlie Rembrandt's highly personal works. To his previously published essays--"Aristotle," "The "Polish' Rider," "Juno," "Rembrandt and the Book of Tobit," and "Rembrandt: Truth and Legend"--the author adds an essay on the theme of the Beggar, another one on subjects involving words spoken, and a new introduction discussing some current trends in Rembrandt criticism. From reviews of the previous edition: "There is a freshness of approach in Professor Held's writing, and his concern with interpretation rather than connoisseurship succeeds in stimulating the reader to think about the paintings, however familiar they may be to us." --Christopher White, Apollo "To look at [these paintings] under Held's very expert guidance is to penetrate more deeply into the problems of Rembrandt's oeuvre than if we plough through the bulkier monographs." --E. H. Gombrich, The New York Review of Books