The Spectacle Seller, Rembrandt van Rijn
The Spectacles Seller is a painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn from 1623 or 1624. Rembrandt painted it around the age of 17 in his home town of Leiden.
It belongs to a series of the five senses which Rembrandt painted around 1624. He was then about eighteen years old; these are Rembrandt's earliest known works. Although the work still looks rather clumsy, in its attention to chiaroscuro and the psychology of the figures it is ahead of the later work for which Rembrandt would become famous. The spectacles seller is dressed like a gypsy or oriental peddler, who at the time offered his goods at annual markets.
