The real-life power of Rembrandt | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

t's interesting that a stolen Rembrandt became world news this week. A drawing by the 17th-century Dutch artist was taken from a hotel in California, but has since been recovered by Los Angeles police. The reports spread rapidly even though, as art thefts go, this one fails the usual media test – the work of art in question is valued at only $250,000 (£153,000). If a mere sketch by Rembrandt with an almost sane-sounding price tag on it creates such a stir, it can only mean one thing. His charisma is truly universal.

No wonder, for Rembrandt is one of the world's supreme artists. Thieves know this. Tragically, the theft this week conforms to a pattern: Rembrandt is a name that sounds glamorous to the criminal fraternity. The most upsetting and still unsolved art theft of recent times was the taking of his painting Storm on the Sea of Galilee from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. The theft of this drawing mattered, too. Rembrandt's drawings rival those of Leonardo da Vinci for inventiveness and vitality.

Across all the media in which he worked – oil painting, drawing and printmaking – Rembrandt has an unrivalled ability to touch our hearts. He cuts through the surface effects of art to go straight to inner truths. He makes atheists conscious of their souls.

Paintings were bought by a broad cross -section of the mercantile society of 17th-century Holland. Not by the poor, but by a large and diverse crowd of merchants. Artists grew up like tulips, and what their down-to-earth audience wanted was down-to-earth depictions of real life:mesmerising lifelike pictures of flowers or food. Rembrandt offered the most primitive art pleasure of all – uncannily convincing portraits.

But Rembrandt's portraits go beyond mere verisimilitude. They seem tostart inside, to capture something invisible – the self, soul, personality, call it what you will. Rembrandt's people are there with you in the room, alive and looking back. It is unsettling.

While other Dutch artists either deliberately s