Fancy a picture in which the shadows were as black as well-polished boots! Rembrandt had to find out how to make his dark shadows rich, and how to make a picture, in which shadow predominated, a beautiful thing in itself, a thing that would decorate a wall as well as depict the chosen subject.

That was no easy problem, and he had to solve it for himself.

It was his life's work.
He applied his new idea in the painting of portraits and in subject pictures, chiefly illustrative of dramatic incidents in Bible history, for the same quality in him that made him love the flare of light, made him also love the dramatic in life.
Rembrandt's mother was a Protestant, who brought up her son with a thorough knowledge of the Scripture stories, and it was the Bible that remained to the end of his life one of the few books he had in his house.

The dramatic situations that he loved were there in plenty.
Over and over again he painted the Nativity of Christ.

Sometimes the Baby is in a tiny Dutch cradle with its face just peeping out, and the shepherds adoring it by candle-light.