(bapt. Middenbeemster, nr. Hoorn, 27 Feb. 1622; d Delft, 12 Oct. 1654). Dutch painter. He was Rembrandt's most gifted pupil and a painter of outstanding originality and distinction, but he died tragically young when the Delft gunpowder magazine exploded, devastating the town, and only a tiny body of his work survives (much may have perished in the disaster). In his youth he worked as a carpenter and it was once thought that he derived his name from this profession (Lat., faber: ‘craftsman’), but it is now known that his father, an amateur painter, had used it. He was probably in Rembrandt's studio in the early 1640s and he settled in Delft in about 1650. Although only about a dozen paintings by him are known, they show great variety. His earliest works (Raising of Lazarus, c.