Die an den Felsen gekettete Andromeda

This is early Rembrandt, painted around 1630 when he was in his twenties and still working in Leiden. The subject was a familiar one. In the myth, Andromeda is chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster, and the hero Perseus swoops in to save her. Painters loved it because it let them put the rescuer, the girl, and the beast all in one dramatic sweep. Titian had done exactly that. Rembrandt strips all of it away. There is no Perseus, no monster, no glamour, just a frightened young woman alone against the rock, her wrists bound above her, her body ordinary rather than ideal. She looks off to the right at something we cannot see, and that off-frame glance carries the whole threat. He was already painting people as they actually looked rather than as myth wanted them.