"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Rembrandt in America, 30 October 2011-22 January 2012 at the North Carolina Museum of Art, 19 February-28 May 2012 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and 24 June-16 September 2012 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts"--T.p. verso.

For Rembrandt, as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance: the strutting and mincing, the wardrobe and face-paint, the full repertoire and gesture and gimace, the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes, the belly-laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon, to shake a fist or uncover a breast; and how to sin and how to atone. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between.