Old Soldier

Around 1630 in the town of Leiden, Rembrandt was in his early twenties and trading ideas with a friend, the painter Jan Lievens. Together they pushed a kind of picture the Dutch called a tronie: not a portrait of a named person but a study of a head, an old face, a costume, a fall of light. This old soldier is one of those. The man is a hired model dressed up in a plumed cap and a steel gorget at the throat, so he reads as a veteran, though no particular soldier was meant. The little panel later passed through a French collection and was bought in 1772 by Catherine II of Russia, which is how it reached the Hermitage.