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(Amsterdam 1583-1633 Amsterdam)

After his return from Rome in 1607, Pieter Lastman was for several decades the most important painter in Amsterdam. His colourful history works, full of lively, meticulously studied figures, were imitated by a group of painters who have become known as the pre-Rembrandtists, and later by the young Rembrandt, who spent a number of months in Lastman’s workshop around 1625. This panel, which has recently been restored, is generally regarded as having been painted between 1615 and 1620. In 1626 Rembrandt copied the central group from Lastman’s painting in his own version of The baptism of the Eunuch.