Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer

This is the Rubens before Rubens. He painted it in 1597, still in his native Antwerp and barely 20 years old, three years before he left for Italy and became the towering Baroque master we picture. It is a small thing, worked in oil on a copper plate not much bigger than a hand, and it is generally taken to be his earliest dated painting. The sitter is unknown. He holds a pair of dividers and a set square, the tools of an architect or a mapmaker, which is why the portrait carries that cautious title. In his other hand is a little cased watch, the old reminder that time is running out.