Man in Armour

Rembrandt painted this armoured figure in 1655, a year before he went spectacularly bankrupt and had to sell his house and his collection in Amsterdam. The commission came from one of his few foreign patrons, a Sicilian nobleman named Antonio Ruffo, who had already bought his Aristotle and wanted a hero to hang beside it. The subject is most likely Alexander the Great, shown young, weighed down under heavy old-fashioned armour, a round shield and a long lance, lost in thought before some battle. People have argued for centuries over who exactly it is, partly because of the soft face and the pearl earring. The armour was already antique when Rembrandt painted it, which is the point. This is meant to be a figure from the deep past.