This moving and elegantly composed painting shows a young man who has fallen asleep over an open book laid out on a table.  While the artist of the work continues to elude scholars, it has previously been associated with some of the painters working around Rembrandt in the 1640s and early 1650s, including Karel Fabritius and Willem Drost.  The incredibly beautiful, reflective brushwork appears to be by the hand of a rather accomplished artist who must have been looking at Rembrandt's tenebrist paintings of those years, and perhaps working quite closely with him. The emotive nature and unique composition are quite bold and striking despite the quietude of the scene, and the overall result is a painting that appeals to the modern eye, perhaps even more than it would have in the seventeenth century. 

Presented at half-length, a young scholar leans heavily on his left hand, eyes closed, with his right arm resting atop the book and tucked under his elbow. The mood is quiet and room is dark; a single source of light comes from outside of the composition, to the left of the viewer. It casts shadows in the drapery of the scholar's coat, and lights only the right side of his face, delicately highlighting the hairs on his slightly overgrown mustache and unkempt hair.

Fig. 1. Hieronymus (Jerome) Wierix, after Philips Galle, Sloth (Acedia), from The Seven Vices, engraving

The exact subject of this intriguing painting also remains a mystery. Sumowski suggested that it represents an allegory of Sloth (or "Acedia"), which was often exhibited in sixteenth-century prints by a person sleeping on their hand (fig. 1). In traditional medieval thought, sloth could be attributed to an overactive mind, a theory which may be reflected in the present painting by the young scholar's open book. It is also reminiscent of an early painting by Rembrandt of a man asleep by a fire (fig. 2). A quiet, dark panel, Rembrandt's painting features a seated full-length figure, older than the one in the Fisch Davidson canvas by at least a generation. He similarly rests his head on his hand, leaning to his left as he sleeps. This painting dates to 1629, early in Rembrandt's career, while the present work is more reflective of Rembrandt's practice in the 1640s, when his brushwork becomes looser and more impressionistic.

Fig. 2. Rembrandt van Rijn, Old man asleep by the fire, oil on oak panel, Turin, Galleria Sabauda, inv. no. 41
Fig. 3. Rembrandt van Rijn, italicized: Old woman sleeping, etching, London, The British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Rembrandt again explored the subject in the mid-1630s with his print of a sleeping woman (fig. 3). Here the composition itself is more reflective of the Fisch Davidson painting, with the figure leaning over a book spread across a table, holding a pair of glasses and shown at half-length in a tightly-designed image. Even if the artist of the painting remains unknown, it is clear that the theme and image was percolating in and around Rembrandt's studio in the mid-seventeenth century.