Ritratto di un giovane, forse Titus

By 1663 Rembrandt had been through bankruptcy. He had lost his house and his collection, and his son Titus, then in his early twenties, had set up a business with Rembrandt's companion Hendrickje so the painter could go on working without creditors seizing everything. This head of a young man has long been called a portrait of Titus, though the faint books behind him have made others read it as a scholar instead, and the identification stays uncertain. What is not in doubt is the handling. It is pure late Rembrandt, the paint pushed on thick and rough up close, resolving into a warm living face as you step back. Titus did not long outlive it. He died in 1668, aged 26, the year before his father.