Historiengemälde mit Selbstbildnis

Rembrandt was 20 when he painted this, still living in Leiden, the town where he was born, years before he made his name in Amsterdam. It shows a crowd in vaguely Roman dress around a seated ruler, and to this day nobody agrees on the story. More than a dozen subjects have been proposed, from the Bible and from ancient history, and none has stuck. What is clearer is the young man looking out of the crowd toward you. That is Rembrandt himself, one of the earliest times he slipped his own face into a picture, a habit he would keep for the rest of his life. The costumes and armour are painted with obvious relish by a painter still working out what he could do.