Portrait of a Man at a Writing Desk, possibly Jacob Bruyningh

In 1631 Rembrandt, then 25, was leaving Leiden for Amsterdam, where he would first make his name as a portrait painter. This canvas belongs to that moment, and it is the earliest of his paintings in the Hermitage. The man is not posed stiffly. He has turned his head as if someone had just interrupted him, his writing hand has stopped, and the other keeps a thick book open on the desk. Rembrandt took real care over the heavy tablecloth, the worn bindings and the man's tired, slightly swollen hands. Who he was is not known. The Hermitage calls the picture simply Portrait of a Scholar, and the name Jacob Bruyningh in its title is only a suggestion. The painting reached Saint Petersburg in 1769, when Catherine the Great bought the collection of the Saxon minister Count Heinrich von Brühl in Dresden.