Two Old Men Disputing

Rembrandt painted this in 1628, in his home town of Leiden, when he was just 22 and barely known outside a small circle. It shows two old men deep in an argument over an open book, most often taken to be the apostles Peter and Paul, surrounded by the props of learning, heavy volumes, a quill, a globe. What makes it more than a picture of two scholars is the light. A hard diagonal shaft comes in from the upper left, catches the back of one man and the pages between them, and leaves the rest of the room sinking into brown shadow. That command of a single light source is the thing Rembrandt would spend the rest of his life perfecting, and it is already here at 22. We even know an early owner. A friend of his, the draughtsman Jacques de Gheyn, listed it in his will in 1641 as two little old men, seated and disputing.