Young Boy in a Studio

As a very young man in Leiden, Jan Lievens shared a studio with an equally young Rembrandt, and the two pushed each other hard before either was famous. This quiet picture shows how painters of their generation learned their craft. A boy sits drawing in a workshop, copying from plaster casts rather than from life, the way every apprentice began. On the shelf behind him you can make out casts of well-known sculptures, among them a head of the Roman emperor Vitellius and Michelangelo's Christ Child from his Madonna in Bruges. Lievens keeps much of the room in warm shadow and lets the light gather on the sheet the boy is working. For a long time the painting hung under another artist's name, and was only given back to Lievens in 1932.