Haman recognizes his fate

This is very late Rembrandt, made around 1665, four years before his death, and no one is quite sure what it shows. It entered the Russian imperial collection in 1773 as Haman, the disgraced court favourite from the Book of Esther on his way to be executed, and the Hermitage still uses that title. Other scholars read a different scene, King David sending the soldier Uriah off to die. The confusion is the picture's own doing. The old Rembrandt has stripped out the action and the identifying props, and painted three figures held in silent, heavy emotion, one man turning away while two others watch. It has hung in Saint Petersburg, in the collection begun by Catherine the Great, since the 18th century.