Seventeenth century Dutch painter Rembrandt's life, known to us almost exclusively through the paintings and tantalisingly thin written documentation, is the stuff of real drama: he survived several plague outbreaks, two wives, and four children. Taking their cue from Rembrandt's work, these lyric poems convey the emotional life of the artist and show him as deeply human: flawed, burdened, sympathetic, and desperately honest about himself and others.