Titus van Rijn (?), the Artist’s Son, Reading

Born in 1641, Titus was the only one of Rembrandt’s four children by his first wife, Saskia, to reach adulthood. He died in 1668, a year before his father, whose affairs he had managed. The picture is not a portrait in the narrow sense of the word; the real theme is the intimate situation of reading. The lighting is used as a means of intensifying the expression in the painting: certain parts of the young man’s face as well as his hand and the book have been highlighted against the darkness.