Saint Paul en prison

Rembrandt was about 21 when he signed this, still working in his home town of Leiden, years before Amsterdam and the wealth and the crowds of pupils. It is one of the earliest paintings he put his name to. He shows the apostle Paul as an old man in a cell, a heavy book open on his knees and a pen in his hand, caught mid-thought as if the next line of a letter will not quite come. A sword leans against the wall beside him. Paul was a Roman citizen and would be executed by the sword, and the letters he wrote from prison became part of the New Testament. The light comes from a small high window and falls mostly on his forehead.