The other picture known to belong to this first year, "St Paul in Prison," is in the Museum at Stuttgart [No. 225], and presents much the same merits of close observation, much the same defects of timid execution as the last. It represents the saint seated in a straw-strewn dungeon, lighted by a single beam of sunlight, surrounded by books, with the sword that symbolises him, meditating before writing. The signature in this case is a double one: the first, consisting of his full name, with one of his curious mis-spellings, Rembrand, and underneath fecit; the second an elaborate R followed by f. 1627, and below the down stroke, crossing the tail of the R, a smaller L, which Dr Bode suggests stands for Leydensis.
Three other pictures, all undated, are attributed to this year or the next, a "Philosopher reading by Candle-light," painted on copper, "A Study of Himself," at Cassel [No. 208], and a "Portrait of his Mother," which was lent for a time to the Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam, but is there no longer.
In the Cassel picture, small as it is, the breadth and vigour of treatment, the courage of the work are so remarkable that it is difficult to believe that it is of the same period as the previous pictures. It is a study of little more than the head, presenting one of those effects of contrasted light and shade which he so loved that pseudo-art slang has nicknamed them of late years Rembrandt effects. The shadows are a little dark, the contrasts are a little forced, wanting the true gradations, but the power displayed is so great, the frankness of the handling so certain that, especially in a photograph, the little study has all the appearance of a life-sized picture.
There are again two pictures dated in the following year, 1628. "Samson captured by the Philistines," at Berlin, is a not too successful first attempt at a composition of several figures, but it is of interest to the student as showing the sternly practical bent of Rembrandt's imagination, the intense craving for a strictly probable conception of the scene which, though at times it led him over the border of the simple into the absolutely ludicrous, more often gives that wonderfully impressive vitality and depth of feeling to his pictures. Here, as elsewhere, he aims not at all at heroic attitudes and over-dramatic effect; he makes no attempt to invent the scene as it ought to have looked, but endeavours to realise how it did look. The Philistines, he knew, were afraid of Samson, and he will not bate a jot of their terrors. One of them advances in fear and trembling, carefully keeping Delilah between himself and the object of his dread; while the other hides unequivocally behind the bed-curtains.