O Apóstolo Paulo em contemplação

Rembrandt was about 24 and still working in Leiden, the town he was born in, when he painted this panel, under 50 centimetres high. It belongs to a run of studies of old bearded men he made in those years. Those heads were long catalogued as portraits of his own father, Harmen, who died in 1630, and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum now describes them plainly as studies of elderly men. Paul is identified by the quill in his right hand and the open book under his left. A dark writing desk stands between him and us, pushing the figure back, and the colour barely leaves brown and yellow, so the light falls on the face and on the hand resting by the book. The picture has been in Nuremberg since long before Leiden became a Rembrandt pilgrimage.