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What Makes Rembrandt So Great? A Look at 10 of His Most Iconic Works

From 'Night Watch' to loving portraits of his wife, these are the paintings that define the Dutch Old Master.

Tourists admire the Danae are painting in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Photo:© Oleksii Sergieiev | Dreamstime.com)

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By Karen Chernick

January 3, 2025
3:30 pm
Los Angeles, CA

As a young painter in Leiden, Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn signed his canvases with a monogram, but once he hit his stride in Amsterdam he began signing his work as we know him today, simply: Rembrandt. The 17th-century artist is known for his individual portraits and group likenesses that are the opposite of dull, Greek mythological paintings, and personal interpretations of Biblical stories. Mostly identified as a painter, in parallel he was a skilled draughtsman and printmaker (producing around 350 etchings). Rembrandt’s paintings were colorful and theatrical at first, full of costumes and sumptuous scenery. Later in life, his images were more minimal and solemn. Rembrandt influenced generations of artists who came after him and is still a creative touchstone to this day. Here are

The 17th-century artist is known for his individual portraits and group likenesses that are the opposite of dull, Greek mythological paintings, and personal interpretations of Biblical stories. Mostly identified as a painter, in parallel he was a skilled draughtsman and printmaker (producing around 350 etchings). Rembrandt’s paintings were colorful and theatrical at first, full of costumes and sumptuous scenery. Later in life, his images were more minimal and solemn.

Rembrandt influenced generations of artists who came after him and is still a creative touchstone to this day. Here are ten famous works by the beloved Dutchman.

10. Danaë (1636–43)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Danaë (1636, but extensively reworked by 1643). (Photo: Collection of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)

Rembrandt’s painting of the mother of Perseus, seen before being impregnated by a sprinkling of gold from Zeus, was long cherished for its beauty. And then in 1985 a Lithuanian man named Bronius Maigys slashed it twice with a knife and sprayed around a liter of sulfuric acid onto the canvas, resulting in serious damage and a 12-year restoration process that granted the Greek mythological work extra notoriety. The painting went back on view at the Hermitage in 1997.

9. Susanna (1636)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Susanna (1636). at Mauritshuis, Den Haag. (Photo: Mauritshuis/Rembrandt House Museum.)

Susanna looks us straight in the eye in this Biblical painting about her and the two elder men who tried, unsuccessfully, to blackmail her into having sex with them. While usually a trio of figures appears in paintings of this story, here the focus is on a solitary, nude, and vulnerable Susanna (the face of one of the elders is barely visible in the shrubbery on the right). Rembrandt carefully notes the details on Susanna’s person—her jewels, a slipper just removed, and the garter marks from a stocking that was on her calf just moments ago.

8. Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633). The Dutch artist’s only seascape was stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in 1990 and has not been seen since. Collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

embrandt generally painted people and historical subjects, and not the outdoors, and so this dramatic scene of Christ and his disciples sailing in tempestuous waters is the artist’s only seascape. One of the disciples clutches a rope in one hand and stares directly at us, which scholars believe is a self-portrait of the artist. Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee is infamously one of 13 artworks stolen during a 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It is still at large.

7. Self-Portrait with Dishevelled Hair (ca. 1628)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Dishevelled Hair (1628)

Of the almost 80 self-portraits attributed to Rembrandt (in the form of paintings, prints, and drawings), this is one of the earliest. Here a young artist in his early 20s peers out at us from under floppy hair rendered in chiaroscuro, his curls etched into the panel with the handle end of his brush while the paint was still wet.

6. Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume (1635)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume (1635). Collection of the National Gallery, London.

Rembrandt painted and drew his wife, Saskia, repeatedly over the decade they shared together before her death of what was likely tuberculosis (including in a 1636 etching of the two of them together). In this painting, which was originally referred to as ‘Flora,’ Saskia is garlanded with elaborate textiles and flowers, including forget-me-nots in her flower crown.

5. The Return of the Prodigal Son (1663–65)

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1663–1669). Collection of the Hermitage Museum.

Completed just a few months before his death and one of his final paintings, Rembrandt’s canvas of this Biblical story was a return to a subject he’d visited around 30 years earlier when he painted himself and his wife, Saskia, in The Prodigal Son in the Brothel (c. 1636). Here he no longer depicts himself as the reckless prodigal son, he more closely resembles the merciful father who is full of wisdom gained over the course of a long life. Tenderness and grace suffuse this painting, which is rendered in Rembrandt’s late career loose brushwork.

4. Self-Portrait (1659)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait (1659). Collection of the National Gallery of Art.

In Rembrandt’s many self-portraits, he could be playful, dressed in costume, or adopting some form of character. Here the 53-year-old man is pared down to the essentials, in an expressively painted and dark color palette that focuses attention on the artist’s features. This is one of Rembrandt’s most recognizable self-portraits, the one many think of when they think of the Dutch Golden Age master.

3. Isaac and Rebecca (also known as The Jewish Bride) (ca. 1665–69)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Isaac and Rebecca (c. 1665-69). Known as ‘The Jewish Bride.’ On loan from the City of Amsterdam (Photo: A. van der Hoop Bequest).

The identities of this man and woman have been lost to time—some believe this is a couple, while others have imagined that this is a father and daughter (at a moment before preparing for a Jewish wedding, hence the painting’s nickname). Even more important than their identities is the gentle gesture of affection rendered in Rembrandt’s expressive late career impasto.

2. The Anatomy Lesson (1632)

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Anatomy Lesson by Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632). (Photo: Mauritshuis)

Dissections were a once-a-year occurrence in 17th-century Amsterdam, which is why the surgeons in this painting are all dressed up. The one not dressed at all is the cadaver—a thief named Adriaen Adriaenszoon who was hanged earlier on the day that a young, 25-year-old Rembrandt started painting this group. The Anatomy Lesson was one of the artist’s first commissions in Amsterdam and an early example of his reimagining the stiff group portrait, which would culminate in the next work on this list, The Night Watch.

1. The Night Watch Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (1642)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (1642). Known as the ‘Night Watch.’ (Photo: Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam)

How do you solve a problem like making a group portrait look interesting, and not stale or posed? This is Rembrandt’s famous answer, of civic guardsmen serving under Captain Cocq. Within the curated chaos, Cocq is easy to spot—he’s the one center stage with a red sash. There are a total of 18 paid portraits in this scene, and sitters paid different fees according to how prominently (or not) they appeared in the painting.

Source: artnet