"The Vision of Daniel"

Willem Drost (1633-1659) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker of history paintings and portraits.

He is a mysterious figure, closely associated with Rembrandt, with very few paintings clearly attributable to him.

He was presumably born in Amsterdam, in what was then known as the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Around 1650 he became a student of Rembrandt, eventually developing a close working relationship, painting history scenes, biblical compositions, symbolic studies of a solitary figure, as well as portraits. As a student, his 1654 painting titled Bathsheba was inspired by Rembrandt's painting done in the same year on the same subject and given the same title, though their treatments are rather different; both Drost's and Rembrandt's paintings are in the Louvre in Paris.

Art historian Houbraken described him as a painter of historical allegories and a pupil of Rembrandt. Houbraken saw a Johannes Predicatie (Sermon of John) by him that was well composed and painted. He spent a long period in Rome where he became friends with Karel Lot and the well-to-do Utrecht painter Joan vander Meer, who had travelled to Italy in the company of the marine painter Lieve Verschuier in 1653 and became friends with him there.

He was in Amsterdam until 1655 and then travelled to Italy. He influenced the painter Adolf Boy. Sometime in the mid-1650s, the young artist went to Rome, where, again according to Houbraken, he collaborated with the German artist Johann Carl Loth on a lost series of the Four Evangelists in Venice. He died in the latter city in 1659.