Pieter Lastman is the son of a town-beadle, who was fired in 1578 because he stayed Catholic; his mother was an appraiser of paintings and goods.

His apprenticeship was with Gerrit Sweelinck, the brother of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

Between approximately 1604 and 1607 Lastman had been in Italy, where he had been influenced by Caravaggio (as were the painters of the Utrecht School a few years later) and by Adam Elsheimer.

Because Rembrandt has never visited Italy (nor will he ever), it is likely that he is influenced by Caravaggio mainly or significantly via Lastman.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, born on July 15, 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, as the ninth child born to the affluent Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck, had attended Latin school and enrolled at the University of Leiden, although according to a contemporary he had a greater inclination towards painting; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh, with whom he spent three years.

After a brief but important apprenticeship of six months with the famous painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt had opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan Lievens.

The Stoning of Saint Stephen is Rembrandt’s first painting, executed in 1625 at the age of 19.