It’s not every morning I wake up thinking about Rembrandt’s dad, but the other day, amid much hand-wringing over radical politics, the image of Rembrandt’s father Herman van Rijn appeared.

Born in 1606, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn should have been a miller like his father and his father before him, but he opted to become a painter. No one in Rembrandt’s family had ever been anything but a miller, and Herman agonised over his son’s artistic leanings and worried that his young fella might never get a “real job”.

A “real job” in those days was a job a parent recognised, a job that your father might have done or a job that your mother might have aspired for you to do. But “real jobs” require the economy to be static, absent technological or demographic change. They could be termed legacy jobs. In periods of great economic transformation, some jobs disappear as old industries are surpassed by new ones and developing tastes and habits demand new services.

Holland of the early 17th century was a country, like much of the West today, going through a period of intense technological, social and demographic change. Rembrandt became an artist in the milieu of an emerging Dutch middle class who wanted their portraits painted to reflect their newly acquired status. Following his apprenticeship, he made a decent living in the portrait business, flattering the merchant class who were making money in the first age of globalisation.

The Dutch traded with the world. Rembrandt was fascinated by what was landing on the docks of Amsterdam – exotic flowers, saplings and spices from Indonesia, oriental rugs and Chinese porcelain, tea and coffee, sugar and mahogany furniture. Stories of foreign........

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