The Stoning of Saint Stephen

This is the earliest known painting by Rembrandt, made when he was about 18 and still living in his home town of Leiden, years before the Amsterdam fame. The lighting comes straight from Caravaggio and the German painter Adam Elsheimer, whose small dramatic scenes were reaching the Dutch through prints. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is being stoned to death, and behind him the young painter put in a face that looks a lot like his own, watching the killing with a kind of alarm. Off to one side sits Saul, the coats of the executioners piled in his lap, the man who would later become Saint Paul.