La cena in Emmaus

Rembrandt was about 22 when he painted this, still in Leiden, the town where he was born, years before the big Amsterdam commissions. The subject is the moment two travellers, sharing supper with a stranger, suddenly recognise him as the risen Christ. Most painters lit that instant with radiance. The young Rembrandt did the opposite: he put the lamp behind Christ, so the figure turns into a dark silhouette and one startled disciple is thrown back in shadow, half his face lost. He had picked up these violent contrasts of light from followers of Caravaggio working in nearby Utrecht. It is painted small, on a wood panel barely larger than a sheet of paper.