Man in Oriental Costume ("The Noble Slav" or "Man in a Turban") by Rembrandt

Rembrandt painted Man in Oriental Costume in 1632, the same year he moved to Amsterdam and his career exploded, he was twenty-six. The painting hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and for a long time this sitter was called The Noble Slav, a fiction built entirely from the costume Rembrandt gave him.

Look past the fabric. The gold brocade, the white fur, the medallion, even the turban with its small ornament at the crest, Rembrandt built all of it with paint, often laid on so thickly it physically catches the light. His real subject is texture: the stiff silk, the soft fur, the glint of metal. But every material surface in the painting is in service of a fantasy, a Dutch painter's idea of what a foreign prince would wear.

Now look at the eyes. They sit under a heavy brow with two wet catchlights, two tiny white dots Rembrandt added to bring life into the shadow. The costume is theater. The face is not. We don't know for certain who this man was, but the current scholarship suggests someone close to the household, a neighbor, a relative, maybe even Rembrandt's father, who sat for the artist many times. Someone who trusted him.

The painting captures a moment when Rembrandt had all the skill in the world and was still building worlds with it. He dressed an ordinary man in extraordinary clothes, then painted the part the clothes couldn't touch.