Picture This

The novel centers on a fantastical conceit: As the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn works on his 1653 painting of the Greek philosopher Aristotle standing beside a bust of the poet Homer, Aristotle gains consciousness on the canvas. What Aristotle observes, remembers, and contemplates across two millennia of Western history provides the novel's sprawling, digressive, and darkly comic structure. The narrative leaps among three interlocking worlds: fifth-century B.C. Athens, 17th-century Amsterdam, and 20th-century New York, linked by themes of money, war, and democratic hypocrisy.

The book opens with Socrates' dying words—the Athenian philosopher whose execution Aristotle repeatedly contemplates—a request that his friend Crito pay a debt of a rooster to Asclepius, the god of medicine. The novel immediately introduces a fictional leather merchant also named Asclepius, who is bewildered by the bequest, taken into custody, and executed. This invented subplot recurs as a comic counterpoint throughout.

In 17th-century Amsterdam, Rembrandt paints the Aristotle on commission from the Sicilian nobleman Don Antonio Ruffo for 500 guilders. Rembrandt is 47 and facing financial ruin: He still owes more than 9,000 guilders on his house, a debt originally meant to be paid in six years but now 14 years overdue. His wife, Saskia van Uylenburgh, died 11 years earlier; of their four children, only Titus survived infancy. Rembrandt now lives with Hendrickje Stoffels, a former maidservant, and contemplates borrowing from friends to save the house, then transferring it to Titus's name to shield it from those same creditors.

The painting's later history spans centuries. It vanishes from Sicily when the Ruffo line ends, reappears in London in 1815 misidentified as a portrait of the Dutch poet P. C. Hooft, passes through various collectors, and is not positively identified as Rembrandt's Aristotle until 1917. In 1961, the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchases it at auction for a then-record $2,300,000.

Aristotle reflects on what he knows of Socrates, nearly all of it filtered through Plato, whom he considers "more wishful than profound." The novel recounts Aristotle's 20 years at Plato's Academy, where he arrived at 17 from the Macedonian royal court; his father had served as physician to the king. Teacher and pupil disagree fundamentally: Plato insists that only eternal, unchanging forms are real, while Aristotle craves empirical investigation. Plato's three failed trips to Syracuse, where he attempts to educate tyrants into philosopher-kings, demonstrate what Aristotle considers his teacher's overestimation of the power of education. Aristotle's own three years tutoring the young Alexander of Macedon yield no philosophical influence. When Alexander dies and anti-Macedonian feeling surges in Athens, Aristotle is charged with impiety and flees to the island of Euboea, saying he will not allow Athens "to sin against philosophy a second time." There, nearing 62 and in failing health, he draws his will and thinks often of Socrates.

The trial and execution of Socrates in 399 B.C. form a major narrative thread. The prosecution is led by Anytus, a leather merchant and military hero of the democratic restoration, bitter that his son has turned to philosophy under Socrates' influence. The charges are impiety and corrupting the youth, but the deeper causes are political: lingering hostility from Socrates' associations with Alcibiades, the brilliant traitor who defected to Sparta, and Critias, Plato's uncle, who led the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. Socrates refuses to plead for his life, proposes as his penalty free maintenance at public expense (an honor reserved for Olympic victors), and declines escape arranged by Crito, arguing that he cannot violate the laws of his city without repudiating the meaning of his life. Found guilty by 280 to 221, he is sentenced to death by 360 to 141, with 80 jurors voting for death for crimes they believed Socrates had not committed. On his final day, he drinks the hemlock and speaks his last words about the debt to Asclepius, completing the circle opened in the novel's first paragraph.

The novel devotes substantial attention to the Age of Pericles, the Athenian statesman who extends democratic rights while building an empire that suppresses allied cities, and to the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Pericles' war strategy collapses when plague devastates Athens, killing about one-third of the population, including Pericles himself. The narrative recounts the destruction of neutral Melos, where Athens massacres all men of military age and enslaves the women and children, and the catastrophic Sicilian expedition, in which the largest armada ever assembled by a Greek city is entirely destroyed. The rhetoric of the demagogue Cleon, who demands total war and labels peace advocates as traitors, is compared to modern political demagoguery.

The Dutch sections trace the rise of the Republic through its Golden Century. The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, posts extraordinary returns and becomes the first modern public corporation with freely traded shares. Yet the poverty of the people makes prosperity possible: Children over six are recruited from orphanages for factory labor, and slavery, prohibited inside the Republic, fuels the colonial economy abroad. The novel connects the ancient invention of money to the commercial worlds of both Athens and Amsterdam, arguing that wherever profit exceeds productive returns, banking dominates and societies weaken. Homer begged, and Rembrandt went bankrupt; as Aristotle contemplates the painting, he recognizes that "Rembrandt could not afford a Rembrandt."

Rembrandt's visitor Jan Six, a learned younger man from a wealthy family, commissions a portrait and provides intellectual companionship. The model posing for Aristotle questions the logic of using his face for a philosopher whose bust Rembrandt already owns; Rembrandt replies that the model's face "looks more real." Rembrandt's former student Govert Flinck commands higher prices for imitations of Rembrandt's early style than Rembrandt does for originals. Rembrandt borrows 1,000 guilders from Six, who later sells the debt at a discount, helping push Rembrandt toward bankruptcy.

Rembrandt's bankruptcy in 1656 strips him of everything: His debts total 17,000 guilders, and his entire collection, including 70 of his own paintings, brings only 2,516 guilders at auction. Titus and Hendrickje form an art-dealing company employing Rembrandt to circumvent guild rules. Hendrickje dies around 1663; Titus marries in 1668 and dies less than a year later. Rembrandt dies in 1669 at 63. His surviving daughter, Cornelia, moves to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies and names her children Rembrandt and Hendrickje.

The painting's 20th-century journey provides a final thread. Mr. and Mrs. Alfred W. Erickson buy it in 1928 for $750,000, sell it back during the Great Depression, and repurchase it for $590,000. After Mrs. Erickson's death, the Metropolitan Museum wins the 1961 auction. Attendance soon declines, and Aristotle, moved from the Great Hall to an ordinary gallery, feels neglected. When a van Gogh sells for $39.9 million in 1987, Aristotle wishes he were a van Gogh.

The fictional trial of the tanner Asclepius provides a darkly comic coda. Prosecuted because Socrates named him with his dying words, Asclepius maintains his innocence but unwittingly echoes Socrates by saying "The only thing I know is that I know nothing," ensuring his indictment. He brings his family to court for sympathy; the jury, fresh from Socrates' dignified example, shouts him down. He is found guilty and executed.

The novel closes with characteristically deflating observations. Death by hemlock, contrary to Plato's serene depiction, involves retching, convulsions, and vomiting. The final paragraph undercuts every certainty the novel has established: The painting "may not be by Rembrandt but by a pupil so divinely gifted in learning the lessons of his master that he never was able to accomplish anything more." The bust of Homer is not of Homer. The man is not Aristotle.