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Recently Rembrandt (Leida 1606- Amsterdam 1669), the great Dutch painter and carver, has been talked about with regard to some clamorous news. Indeed, recently the authorship of a painting of which nothing was known, has been attributed to him, and the discovery seems to have happened in a curious way. The existence of the painting was already known of, thanks to a reproduction dating from around 1800, but nothing was known about its history and preservation until now.
The work came to light in October 2007, when an English family handed the painting over to Moore Allen & Innocent to auction it, and back then the first questions and perplexities about the possible authorship of the work started being raised. The auction house of Cirencester in Gloucestershire had initially attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt’s disciples, but in the doubt that it could have been done by the great Dutch master, the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam was referred to for an opinion, but politely declined the request, as so did an important London auction house, which had already refused the work twice.
The painting was in conclusion estimated, as a work by one of Rembrandt’s assistants, at 1,000-1,500 pounds, but it was then purchased by an anonymous buyer, probably from London, for 2 million pounds, a record amount for this area outside London. Such amount, much higher than all expectations, is easily justified by the fact that at auction the painting was presented to the public as a work of doubtful attribution, specifying that it could have been executed by a disciple or even by the Flemish master himself.
Only after the sale, the painting was patiently and accurately examined by the Rembrandt Research Project, a group of expert researchers who have been studying the great painter’s works for years. Ernst van de Wetering, creator and founder of the Rembrandt Research Project, after a long investigation, in the last days has deliberated the authenticity of the portrait, attributable to Rembrandt. Evidence of such conclusion is contained in a detailed report of 23 pages, in which it is explained step by step how doubts about the authenticity of the work have turned into certainty.
The small oil on copper (cm 22,2×17) represents the portrait of a young laughing man, very similar to a self-portrait by Rembrandt executed in 1629 in Norimberg. Nevertheless, many doubts tormented the experts, who hesitated before the unclear distinctive features of this painting. Initially, dwelling on the chosen technique and the anatomic aspect of the subject, experts excluded that it could be a work by Rembrandt, as he only did few samples of oil on copper, a technique mainly used by his disciples, and secondly the creases of the clothes painted made the human figure slightly deformed, closer to the latest works by the master, which were the ones that his disciples imitated the most.
However, Van de Wetering found some features which, he believes, are indisputably referable to Rembrandt’s hand, in the strokes, the outlines, the material used and the signature. In fact, although the support in copper was not used much by the Dutch painter, it is true that during his youth he used thin plates of the same size as the work analyzed; furthermore, an x-ray radiography highlighted the presence of another underlying painting, also very similar, for the choice of theme and compositional order, to other works done by him.
However, the final confirmation is due to a thorough analysis of the RHL monogram, painted in a particular way: the artist applied it to the background when the paint was still wet, the direction of the strokes which characterize the handwriting corresponds perfectly to the monogram of another work of sure attribution. The other curious and particularly interesting note is that such monogram, RHL, which stands for Rembrandt Harmenzoon Leydendendis (Rembrandt son of Harmen from Leyden), was used by the artist only for a short period of his career, when he was still a beginner and was not very renowned. In fact, according to the expert of the Rembrandt Research Project, this type of autograph would have been used by the artist only between 1628 and 1629, a period that was too short and remote for the artist’s disciples to have known about this monogram, and therefore imitate it or divulgate it. Finally, the same choice of subject backs up the hypothesis of a juvenile work, because it was in that period that Rembrandt was interested in psychological and emotional implications of human beings, which he was able to express through the physiognomy of faces and the posture of subjects, as in this case.
Therefore, it is likely to be a self-portrait that the great artist painted looking at himself in the mirror, when he was only 22 years old (1628) and he still had a smiling and carefree face, oblivious and distant from the sad events that would have hit him in the future. The title chosen for the painting, which will be on display at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, is “Rembrandt Laughing”.
After the clamorous news, some info started making its way round about the possible value of the work, risen shockingly to 20 million pounds, but more accredited sources reduce the amount to about 5 million pounds. Beyond the value attributed to the work, after such a discovery it is easy to guess that the lucky buyer will not want to sell his “Rembrandt Laughing”, now a certified work of art.
For those who would like to read the Rembrandt Research Project report in English, it is possible to download it free from the web address http://www.rembrandtresearchproject.org/
Translated by Giorgina Arcuri
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