Jeremias beklagt die Zerstörung Jerusalems

Rembrandt made this in 1630, the year before he left his home town of Leiden for Amsterdam. He was in his early twenties. The old man is the prophet Jeremiah, who had warned that Jerusalem would fall, and in the dim background the city is indeed burning, taken by the Babylonians. Rembrandt keeps almost the whole panel in shadow and lets a single warm light rest on the prophet's forehead and hand as he leans his head on his palm, worn out with grief. Watch what that firelight does to the gold vessels beside him, the plate and the pot seem to catch and hold the glow of the distant flames. The play of dark and sudden light people would spend the rest of the century calling Rembrandtesque is already here, from a painter barely out of his apprenticeship.