El apóstol Pablo

There is a signature in the lower corner reading Rembrandt, and a date that looks like 1633, though the last figure is hard to read. Even so, no one is quite sure Rembrandt painted this. It comes out of his Amsterdam studio in the early 1630s, when he was young and newly successful and surrounded by pupils who had learned to imitate his manner so closely that their pictures were sometimes sold under his name. Several scholars now give this Paul to one of them, Govaert Flinck, his most gifted follower at the time. The museum in Vienna still lists it as a Rembrandt while noting the doubt. It shows the apostle stopped in the middle of writing, his pen lifted, as if caught short by whatever he has just understood.