Rembrandt van Rijn spent most of his life at Leiden

Rembrandt van Rijn was born in Leiden, Netherlands, in the Dutch Republic. He went to Latin school as a child. He enrolled at the University of Leiden at the age of 13, despite having a stronger preference for painting, according to a contemporary; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburg, with whom he spent three years.

After a brief but important six-month apprenticeship with painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt stayed with Jacob Pinas for a few months before starting his workshop, though Simon van Leeuwen claimed that Joris van Schooten taught Rembrandt in Leiden. Rembrandt ran a large workshop with many students. The list of Rembrandt pupils from both his time in Leiden and his time in Amsterdam is quite long, owing to the fact that his influence on painters around him was so great that it is difficult to tell whether someone worked for him in his studio or simply copied his style for patrons eager to acquire a Rembrandt. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic as part of his artistic training.

Rembrandt realized that he could make more money in Amsterdam than in Leiden as his artistic career progressed. Life in Leiden was not kind to artists. Amsterdam was known as the Dutch Golden Age's capital at the time.