Van Swanenburch had studied in Italy; but his own painting, to judge by the few examples still in existence, was entirely commonplace. Three years were more than enough to be passed under his tuition. At the end of the third, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam, and there entered the studio of Lastman. His second master also had studied in Italy, and also was a painter of mediocre talent, popular in his own times--the Apelles of the day, he was called--but remembered now chiefly because of his relations to his pupil. From the first, Rembrandt, even if obliged to paint the stock subjects of the day, was determined to treat them in his own way, and not to follow set forms that happened to be adopted in the schools. He used real men and women for models, and painted them as he saw them, not as he was bidden to look at them through his teacher's spectacles. In six months he had learned at least one thing, that Lastman had nothing more to teach him. The man of genius must ever be his own master, though he remain the hard-working student all his days. Back to Leyden and to his father's house, Rembrandt had not returned to lead a life of idleness. He worked tremendously in these early years. Even needed models he found in the members of his family; he has made the face of his mother as familiar as that of a friend; his own, with the heavy features, the thick, bushy hair, the small intelligent eyes, between them the vertical line, fast deepening on the fine forehead, he drew and etched and painted, again and again. More elaborate compositions he also undertook. As in his maturity, it was to the Bible he turned for suggestions: Saint Paul in prison, Samson and Delilah, the Presentation in the Temple--these were the themes then in vogue which he preferred, rendering them with the realism which distinguished his later, more famous Samsons and Abrahams and Christs, making them the motive for a fine arrangement of color, for a striking study of light and shadow. A pleasant picture one can fancy of his life at this period; he was with his own people, for whom his love was tender; busy with brush, pencil, and etching-needle; he was strengthening his powers of observation, developing and perfecting his style, occasionally producing work that won for him renown in Leyden; and, gradually, he gathered round him a small group of earnest fellow-workers, chief among them Lievens, Gerard Dou, and Van Vliet, the last two, though but slightly his juniors, looking up to him as master. These were the years of his true apprenticeship.