Light From The Left
Poems on paintings by Rembrandt
by Judith Lauter

Rising out of my own creation of line and color, ambient dark and a single
source of light I consider you in this oily mirror.
Smell the reek of the paint base, sienna and lead white
I mix myself from the bread money and heat money, feel the cold fingertips
I paint with, the rough weight of woolens that keep the winter off.

Many consider him as one of the great painters and print makers in European history. His masterpieces are renowned all over the world. But who is the real Rembrandt? Is there more to him than what we are accustomed to?

Poet and neuroscientist Judith Lauter discovers a Rembrandt both familiar and far different from the one we know. This book offers a stunning collection of poems about his paintings, a product of the author’s fascination with this maestro of art.

“I see Rembrandt as a man in love not only with light, texture, and color, but also with many aspects of the diversity of the Netherlands of his time.”

Here, Rembrandt is still recognizably the massively talented artist of religious and secular masterpieces, a figure virtually synonymous with “great painter.”

But in these poems, the author locates a new Rembrandt- one who is compassionate, subtle, a slyly subversive political thinker and observer of the human condition, who views the world from a unique perspective.

After reading this book, you may never look at a Rembrandt painting in quite the same way again.