Allegory of Hearing, Allegory of
Smell, Allegory of Touch, from The
Series of the Five Senses: Stone
Operation (Allegory of Touch)ca. 1624–25

Rembrandt van Rijn
(Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam)

Currently on view at: Long Museum, Shanghai

oil on panel
21.5 x 17.7 cm
RR-102© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 2 of 23

How To Cite
Libby, Alexandra B., Ilona van Tuinen, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. "Allegory of Hearing, Allegory of Smell,Allegory of Touch, from The Series of the Five Senses." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
This page is available on the site's Archive. PDF of every version of this page is available on the Archive,
and the Archive is managed by a permanent URL. Archival copies will never be deleted. New versions areadded only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 3 of 23

On 22 September 2015, one of the most surprising and exciting recent

Comparative Figures

discoveries in Dutch art transpired in the auction house Nye & Company inBloomfield, NJ: the appearance of one of Rembrandt van Rijn’s earliest
paintings, Unconscious Patient.[1] After surfacing in the collection of a New
Jersey family, it was catalogued as “Continental School, NineteenthCentury” and garnered little attention during the viewing period.[2] At theauction, however, it became obvious that two international phone bidders
had understood the importance of this painting, and as their bidding
intensified way beyond the pre-sale estimate so did the atmosphere in theauction house sales room. By the time the hammer came down in favor of
the Parisian dealer Talabardon & Gautier, the puzzled auction-goers wereon the edges of their seats. When the auctioneer announced that the newly
sold painting was thought to be an early Rembrandt (which the underbidder revealed upon bowing out), the room burst into cheers andapplause. Almost immediately, this discovery was featured in newspapers

Fig 1. Rembrandt van
Rijn, Unconscious
Patient (Allegory of Smell),
RR-111 (panel with eighteenthcentury additions before
restoration)around the globe.[3]It is not entirely surprising that the connection between the painting andthe most celebrated seventeenth-century Dutch artist had not been madeearlier, and by more people. The little panel depicting an elderly man andwoman attending an unconscious patient, does not feature the strong
chiaroscuro effects, subdued palette, and complex psychological tension
normally associated with Rembrandt’s works (fig 1). The painting was
also covered in layers of yellow varnish and dirt, concealing many of thesubtleties of the composition. Moreover, compounding the difficulty ofrecognizing Rembrandt’s hand was the fact that his panel had been
inserted into a larger panel, and that the composition had been extended

Fig 2. Rembrandt van Rijn, ThreeMusicians (Allegory of Hearing),
RR-105on all sides by a later hand.
Once the association with Rembrandt had been made, it became clear to
all those familiar with Rembrandt’s early oeuvre that Unconscious Patient
depicted the Allegory of Smell, part of a series of Five Senses that
Rembrandt painted in Leiden around 1625, when he was but a teenager.
Three other panels from this series still survive, all of which surfaced indifferent private collections in the first half of the twentieth century. Just
when this series was dispersed is not known, but probably not before theearly eighteenth century, at which time, it seems, all of these compositions
were expanded after Rembrandt’s original panels had been set into larger
ones.[4]Fig 3. Rembrandt van Rijn, Stone
Operation (Allegory of Touch),
RR-102© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 4 of 23

Among the three other extant works from this series of the Five Senses
are two in the Leiden Collection: Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing)[5](fig 2) and Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) (fig 3).[6] The otherpainting, Spectacles Seller (Allegory of Sight), (fig 4), is in Museum De
Lakenhal in Leiden.[7] Still unaccounted for is Allegory of Taste.
Soon after the acquisition of the Allegory of Smell in September 2015,
Rembrandt’s monogram, RHF, was discovered on a drawing of a man
wearing a tabard and fur hat attached to the wooden cupboard at theupper right (fig 5), making it the earliest signed painting in the master’s
oeuvre.[8] When Allegory of Smell was restored and its surface stripped of
the yellow varnish that had suppressed the brilliance of Rembrandt’s color,the visual connections to the other known panels from Rembrandt’s series

Fig 4. Rembrandt van Rijn,
Spectacles Seller (Allegory ofSight), ca. 1624 oil on panel 21 x
17.8 cm (8 ¼ x 7 in Museum De
Lakenhal, Leiden, S 5697

became ever more evident (fig 6). Unlike decisions made when otherpaintings from this series were restored, in this case it was decided not toremove the early eighteenth-century addition, thus retaining this panel’scomposite character (fig 7).
Each of the three panel paintings in Rembrandt’s series of Five Senses inthe Leiden Collection feature three tightly-cropped figures who focus on ashared experience in a dark, undefined space. Rembrandt robed his
figures in bright pink and light blue attire, which, lit by artificial light sources
seen and unseen, provide splashes of color that greatly enliven theimages. These surgeons, patients, and singers—young, old, male, female,crude and refined—are unforgettably expressive characters involved in

Fig 5. Signature detail,
Rembrandt van
Rijn, Unconscious Patient(Allegory of Smell), RR-111

activities that connect the senses of smell, touch and hearing in ways both
humorous and empathetic, whether reviving a fainted patient, undertaking
a surgical operation, or singing from an open songbook.
Allegory of Smell features a young man wearing a colorful, loosely-draped
housecoat, who has fainted and is slumped in a chair. An extremely
worried old woman wearing a fur-trimmed hooded mantle tries to revive
him by holding a white handkerchief to his nose, presumably one
containing smelling salts.[9] An equally old man, his right hand covered bya white cloth, holds the youth’s bare right forearm and anxiously awaits tosee if the woman’s efforts succeed. His colorful wardrobe, earring andgold chains, as well as the knives, scissors, razors and lotions displayed ina large wooden cupboard, identify him as a barber-surgeon, a profession

Fig 6. Rembrandt van
Rijn, Unconscious Patient(Allegory of Smell), RR-111,
without eighteenth-century
addition (after restoration)

renowned for its quacks.[10] The position of the young man’s exposed© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
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forearm indicates that before the youth fainted, the quack was preparing to
draw blood from one of the large veins in the patient’s arm, a practicecalled bloodletting.[11] The quack would have used his white cloth to wipeup the blood after completing his procedure.
Patients being bled were generally portrayed with their lower arm exposed,
exactly as in the image of another bloodletting (fig 8).[12] Once pricked witha lancet (a two-edged surgical knife or blade with a sharp point), the blood
would drip into a bowl often held by an assistant. Occasionally patientswould faint at the end of a bloodletting, a condition deemed to indicate thetreatment’s success. Here, however, one sees neither wound nor blood,neither bandage nor bowl, which means that the young man has not
fainted in reaction to such a session, but in anticipation of it. Rembrandt’s

Fig 7. Rembrandt van
Rijn, Unconscious
Patient (Allegory of Smell),
RR-111, with eighteenth-century
addition (after restoration)

image, indeed, not only mocks the elderly woman’s excessive concern
about the patient’s condition and the quack’s profession, but also theyoung man’s lack of inner fortitude.
Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) is an equally humorous depiction of
one of the five senses. In a darkened room that hardly suggests a
professional atmosphere, a barber-surgeon wields a scalpel to remove astone from the head of his patient, who clenches his fists and teeth in pain.
The only light illuminating the scene is the candle held by an intense
elderly woman with a wrinkled face and clenched jaw. Allegory of Touch
belongs to a tradition of images hearkening back to the early sixteenth
century, in which traveling quacks were shown performing “stone
operations” that purportedly cured stupidity by removing the stone offolly.[13] One of the most important of these images is an engraving madeFig 8. Egbert van Heemskerck,
Portrait of the Barber Jacob
Fransz Hercules and his Family
in his Barbershop, 1669, oil oncanvas, 70 x 59 cm, Amsterdam
Museum, Amsterdam, inv. SA
2121

by Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533) that was widely copied and imitated(fig 9).[14] Rembrandt’s figures, with their old-fashioned dress, bulbous
hooked noses, gruesome teeth and deeply wrinkled faces, fit firmly within
this tradition. Although such surgeries were, in fact, not performed, thephrase “to have a stone removed from one’s head” was part of the popularvernacular and was used to ridicule those considered to be foolish or
easily duped.[15]Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) similarly depicts an evening scene,
but in this instance one illuminated by an unseen light source. In this joyful
image, two elderly singers, one male and one female, are joined by ayoung man who peers down over their shoulders at the large open music© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 6 of 23

book. The bald man, with pronouncedly wrinkled forehead and eyeglasses
balanced on the tip of his nose, guides their song with the beat of hisraised hand as the old woman, with an equally wrinkled face, leans

Fig 9. Lucas van Leyden, The
Surgeon, 1524, etching, 11.7 x
7.6 cm, National Gallery of Art,
Gift of the Estate of Leo
Steinberg, 2011.139.35

forward enthusiastically to join him in song.[16] The comedy here resides in
the advanced age of the two primary singers, for generally images ofAllegory of Hearing (fig 10) depict young lovers singing and playing
instruments together. Even at their advanced age, however, the couple’s
full engagement in the music seems to allude to the ideals of living abalanced and harmonious life. The man’s fur-lined tabard and thewoman’s colorful turban are not contemporary attire, and help indicate theallegorical character of the scene.[17]Just how Rembrandt devised the various scenes in his series of theFive
Senses, and the sequence in which he intended them to be viewed, is notknown. Nevertheless, it is clear that with the exception of Allegory of
Smell, the young master loosely followed long-established iconographic
traditions for his compositional inventions. For example, a number ofsixteenth-century artists based their depictions of the Allegory of Touch on
Lucas

van

Leyden’s

The

Stone

Operation.[18]As

Fig 10. Jan Saenredam after
Hendrick Goltzius, The Sense of
Hearing, ca. 1595, engraving, 173
x 123 mm, National Gallery of Art,
Washington D.C., Rosenwald
Collection, 1943.3.4640

discussed

above, Allegory of Hearing often showed young lovers playing musicalinstruments. There is no precedent, however, for connecting Allegory of
Smell to bloodletting. Quite to the contrary, artists like Hendrick Goltzius
depicted The Sense of Smell in a series of The Five Senses as young
lovers smelling a rose (fig 11). One thus wonders why Rembrandt choseto depict this unusual subject. It is likely that his inspiration was connectedto the devastating plague that hit the Netherlands, and in particular Leiden,
in

1624,

the

very

year

in

which

he

executed The

Five

Senses. Significantly, the many ailments that bloodletting was thought tocure included the plague.[19]The excitement surrounding the appearance of an unknown earlyRembrandt at the auction in 2015, and the enthusiastic reactions to thissmall panel in the art world, contrasts remarkably with the reservations
about the other three panels from Rembrandt’s series of Five Senses

Fig 11. Jan Saenredam after
Hendrick Goltzius, The Sense of
Smell, ca. 1595, engraving, 173 x
123 mm, National Gallery of Art,
Washington D.C., Rosenwald
Collection, 1943.3.4640

expressed throughout most of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Indeed, the evolution of our understanding of Rembrandt’s work is
fascinating, for it has proceeded in fits and starts. One of the mostcontentious areas in Rembrandt studies concerns the budding master’s
early works in Leiden, during the period of his career when he was forging© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 7 of 23

his artistic identity in a boldly aggressive fashion, and when his style
evolved with remarkable rapidity. This critical ambivalence is nowheremore evident than in the ongoing critical reactions to Allegory of Hearing
and Allegory of Touch after they were discovered and published in the
1930s.
Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) was the first of these paintings to
be introduced in the Rembrandt literature. In 1933 Vitale Blockpublished Three Musicians after H. Schneider had discovered it in thecollection of the dealer N. Katz in Dieren.[20] Block not only attributed thepainting to Rembrandt, but he also dated it to about 1626, or shortly
before. He noted that the painting had been enlarged on all sides at a later
date, recognized that the panel represented Allegory of Hearing, andFig 12. Rembrandt van Rijn,
Christ Driving the MoneyChangers from the Temple, 1626,
oil on panel, 44 x 33 cm, Pushkin
Museum, Moscow, F-1900.

postulated that it belonged to a lost series of the five senses. By the time of
Block’s publication, the painting had already been acquired by the Dutch
industrialist and collector Dr. C.J.K. van Aalst who, later that decade, alsopurchased Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch).
When Van Aalst’s collection was published in 1939, Willem Valentiner,
who wrote the introduction to the catalogue, reiterated many of Vitale
Bloch’s conclusions, particularly that the two panel paintings, which had
been similarly enlarged and were the same size, belonged to a hitherto
unknown series of Five Senses.[21] Unlike Bloch, however, Valentiner
asserted that Rembrandt had also painted the additions. As Bloch andValentiner recognized, the paintings’ vibrant colors share qualities found inother early works by the young Rembrandt, among them The Baptism of
the Eunuch and Balaam and the Ass, both executed in 1626.

[22]

Similarly,

the broad, rough brushwork and thick application of paint in the clothing
and furrowed brows of the elderly figures are reminiscent of Rembrandt’s

Fig 13. Lucas Vorsterman, after
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of
Jan Lievens, c. 1632, engraving,
24.1 x 15.8 cm., from the
Iconography, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple , also 1626 (fig 12).
Nevertheless, as they rightly perceived, Stone Operation and ThreeMusicians probably date slightly earlier than Rembrandt’s works of 1626.
The awkward characteristics of Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) andThree Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) troubled many later scholars, andthe attribution of these works to Rembrandt was a matter of much dispute
until the early 1980s. For example, in 1956, Knuttel rejected the attribution
to Rembrandt, and Rosenberg concluded that the paintings were “oddcopies after Rembrandt.”[23] Bauch proposed that they were the work of a

Fig 14. Jan Lievens, Allegory of
the Five Senses, ca. 1622, oil on
panel, 78.2 x 124.4 cm, private
collection© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 8 of 23

young Gerrit Dou (1613–75).[24] Although in 1968 Wurfbain and Haak
renewed the attribution of these paintings to Rembrandt and believed them
to be contemporaneous with Christ Driving the Money-Changers from theTemple, Gerson, in his 1969 revision of Bredius, felt that an attribution to
Rembrandt was unlikely because of the heavy and dry brushwork.[25] Inthat same year, however, the paintings were exhibited in Montreal andToronto as by Rembrandt, an attribution with which Held, in his review ofthe exhibition, agreed. Held proposed a date of execution of around1622/23.[26] In 1976 the two paintings were exhibited in Leiden with an
attribution to Rembrandt, this time dated ca. 1624/25.[27] In 1982,
however, the Rembrandt Research Project relegated the works to the “B”
list, meaning that Rembrandt’s authorship could not be positively accepted

Fig 15. Jan Lievens, Tric Trac
Players, 1624/25, oil on panel, 98
x 106 cm, Spier Collection,
Londonor rejected.[28]In

1987–88

Stone

Operation(AllegoryofTouch)and Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) underwent a radical
conservation treatment in which their added panel surrounds were
removed.[29] By that time, dendrochronological examinations had
demonstrated that Rembrandt’s original core images were painted on oak
panels datable to the early seventeenth century, but that the added panels
were much later in date.[30] Moreover, pigment analysis had determined

Fig 16. Eighteenth-century
addition, formerly for Rembrandt
van Rijn, ThreeMusicians (Allegory of Hearing),
RR-105that the overpainting on the extension and original panel of Rembrandt’s
Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) contained an eighteenth-century
pigment.[31] The decision was thus made to remove the painted extensions
as well as the extensive overpainting on Rembrandt’s original
panels.[32] The paintings improved markedly in appearance, and doubts
about their attribution to Rembrandt subsided. In volume 4 of Corpus of
Rembrandt Paintings, published in 2005, Ernst van de Wetering declaredthat the restoration of the paintings had removed any doubt of theirauthenticity.[33] The paintings have, henceforth, been accepted as anintegral part of Rembrandt’s corpus.

In 2006 Bernhard Schnackenburg revisited the hypothesis that thepaintings should date to the early 1620s rather than the period after his sixmonth apprenticeship in 1626 with Pieter Lastman (1583–1633).
Schnackenburg noted that the paintings reflect an unrestrained artistic
personality, “one in need of practice but willing to take a risk.”[34] Van© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 9 of 23

Straten similarly published them as an example of Rembrandt’s preLastman era, executed around 1624/25, solidifying the works’ place as
among the earliest works executed by the young master.[35]As many authors have noted, these early paintings are rendered withstrong chiaroscuro light effects and striking palette of pinks and light blues
that relate stylistically to the innovations of Gerrit van Honthorst(1592–1656).[36] Benesch, however, also saw in Rembrandt’s figures theexperience of “cruel reality” not evident in the more charming images of
the Utrecht Caravaggisti.[37] The most likely source for the transmission of
Van Honthorst’s manner of painting to Rembrandt is Jan Lievens(1607–74), with whom Rembrandt’s early career is deeply entwined.
At the time that Rembrandt executed the Leiden Collection’s panels,
Lievens had been painting independently in Leiden for nearly four years.
Jan Orlers, who knew Lievens well, records that the young artist returned
from his apprenticeship with Pieter Lastman in 1621. Nevertheless,Lievens probably continued his training in Utrecht, since his paintings from1622–24 fully reflect the latest artistic achievements of Van Honthorst andthe other Utrecht Caravaggisti.[38] Rembrandt completed his own threeyear apprenticeship with Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburgh (1571–1638) in
1624, but there is no information about what he subsequently did toadvance his artistic career.[39] It is entirely possible, even probable, that in
1625 Rembrandt studied with his Leiden compatriot Jan Lievens, perhaps
even sharing a studio with his friend before continuing his tutelage underLastman in 1626.[40] Significantly, the model for the youngest member ofthe group in Rembrandt’s Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) is
Lievens himself (fig 13).[41]In theme and execution, these paintings are remarkably similar to
Lievens’s work from the first half of the 1620s. Much as with Lievens’s
Allegory of Five Senses of ca. 1622 (fig 14), they feature tightly cropped,
half-length figures in brightly colored dress. The tight pyramidal groupings,
flattened backgrounds, and strong chiaroscuro light effects are also similar
to those in Lievens’s Tric Trac Players of 1624/25 (fig 15). Rembrandt’s
bold brushwork, which endows the compositions with a sense of
immediacy, also resembles that in Lievens’s early paintings.
Though Lievens was an important influence on Rembrandt at this stage of© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 10 of 23

his career, Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell), Stone Operation(Allegory of Touch) and Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) also
demonstrate Rembrandt’s own inventive personality. Lievens worked on alarge scale, which embues his figures with both grandeur and gravitas.
Rembrandt’s works, on the other hand, are relatively small, and anticipate
the scale of painting that he would gravitate toward in the late 1620s.
Writing around 1628–29, Constantijn Huygens reflected on the two artists’different manners of painting:
So off-hand I would venture to suggest that in precision and liveliness,
Rembrandt is the superior of Lievens. Conversely the latter wins throughgrandeur in conception and in the daring of subjects and forms. Everything
this young spirit strives for must be majestic and exalted. Rather thanconforming to the true size of what he depicts, he gives his painting alarger stature. Rembrandt, on the other hand, would rather concentrate
totally on a small painting and achieves a result on a small scale that one
looks for in vain in the largest paintings of others.[42]One important and particularly intriguing question is whether, as has been
generally assumed, these tightly cropped images reflect Rembrandt’s
original intent. Could it be that the eighteenth-century additions actuallyreflect, and even replicate, Rembrandt’s original painted compositions?
This question is certainly pertinent after the discovery of Allegory of Smell,where the eighteenth-century addition to the panel has remained intact.
The tight cropping of the main figure is so illogical—the tips of his fingers
and the back of his head are both cut by the edge of the panel—that one
doubts the cropping represents Rembrandt’s intent. Moreover, the pictorial
elements in the addition are so closely integrated with those in
Rembrandt’s original design that it seems hard to believe they were a later
invention. It is difficult to identify the location of the surgeon-barber’s tools
without further knowledge of the chest that holds them, as revealed by thechest on the addition. Finally and most tellingly, the spout of the rounded
alembic (glass distillation vessel) painted on the extension behind thesurgeon-barber extends onto Rembrandt’s original.
Similar arguments can be made with Allegory of Hearing, the only otherinstance where the eighteenth-century addition is still preserved, althoughseparated from Rembrandt’s original panel.[43] Strikingly, the extended
hand of the young singer and the candle lighting the scene are both found© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
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on the painted extension (fig 16). Candle-lit scenes in Dutch art from thisperiod virtually always include the actual candle, albeit sometimes with theflame visible and sometimes with it hidden. The extended hand of the third
singer over the candle is also quite logical for Rembrandt’s composition.
One of the fascinating phenomena in Leiden paintings over the course of
the seventeenth century is that a number of artists did expand theircompositions by inserting panels into larger ones. Generally, when these
expansions were made, the core panel was set into a customized, shallow
opening in the larger panel, so that the reverse of the larger panel showedno evidence that this procedure had occurred. The reasons for thiscomposite panel structure are not known, but it is remarkable how often
one finds it in works by such artists as Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris the
Elder (1635-81).[44] Sometimes these extensions seem to have been
conceived and executed at the time that the work was created, andsometimes paintings were enlarged at a later date by the original artist.
Occasionally, panels were inserted into larger panels by later artists, whothen also expanded upon the original compositions of their predecessors.
The question remains as to whether Rembrandt also worked in thismanner when painting the series of Five Senses. One solid bit of evidence
that supports this hypothesis is related to Rembrandt’s painting of 1626,
Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple , which is signed
RHF, exactly as is Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell). This work wasalso expanded by being inset into a larger panel. Although this extension
was removed in 1930 and is now lost, an old photograph of the enlarged
composition suggests that the extension was painted by Rembrandt, or atleast based on his original composition.[45]Should Rembrandt have conceived his depictions of the five senses insuch a composite manner, then the question remains: what happened tothese original extensions that persuaded some eighteenth-century
restorer/artist/dealer/owner to remove and replace them? Did the larger
panel develop splits or warp? Did the paint not adhere properly to theground so that it was flaking or otherwise unstable? Unfortunately, there isapparently no way to know what might have occurred that necessitatedsuch a radical reworking of the paintings in this series.
Whatever the historical circumstances surrounding the dramatic structural© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 12 of 23

changes that occurred in the early eighteenth century with Unconscious
Patient (Allegory of Smell), Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) andThree Musicians (Allegory of Hearing), these works offer special insights
about Rembrandt’s artistic beginnings. In these paintings one sees how
he, as a young man, experimented with the colors and brushwork thatwould so define his later work, and how he began to manipulate light andshade in a manner that became a trademark of his art. Above all, the three
paintings reveal Rembrandt to have been, from the outset, impressionable
yet independent, influenced yet innovative. In other words, they show the
makings of the master.

- Alexandra B. Libby, Ilona van Tuinen, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 13 of 23

Endnotes
1. Portions of this text are adapted from Ilona van Tuinen’s discussion of Unconscious Patient(Allegory of Smell) in Jordaens Rembrandt: Two New Early Works , Paris, 2016, 20–36. The
entry has also benefited enormously from editorial comments made by Henriette Rahusen.
2. The painting was consigned by three brothers, Nathaniel, Roger, and Steven Landau, who
had inherited it after their parents’ death. Their grandfather, Philip Rappoport, who lived inPaterson, New Jersey, probably acquired the painting from a dealer or auction house in the
New York area in the 1930s.
3. Notable examples are Paul Jeromack, “Has a long-lost painting by a teenaged Rembrandt
been discovered in New Jersey?” The Art Newspaper, 23 September 2015; Alanna
Martinez,“Mystery

Painting

Sold

in

NJ

Auction

May

Be

a

Long-Lost

Early

Rembrandt,” Observer, 23 September 2015, and Gary Schwartz, “Rembrandt’s fourth
sense: a quick reaction,” The Schwartzlist, column no. 342, 24 September 2015 (withadditional remarks on 25 and 26 September).
4. With the exception of Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell), these later additions havebeen removed. Only one of these larger added panels has been preserved, the one thatonce surrounded Allegory of Hearing (see figure 16). It is in The Leiden Collection along with
Rembrandt’s original panel painting (see figure 2).
5. Though traditionally referred to as Three Musicians, this painting depicts three individuals in
the act of singing, rather than playing instruments.
6. The paintings, which entered the collection of the Dutch industrialist and collector Dr. C.J.K.
van Aalst in the 1930s, remained there until 1965 when they went to The Hague on
consignment to the art dealer Hans Cramer. Cramer had them for many years, their
attribution to Rembrandt very much in limbo. Eventually, in 1984 the paintings were sold to
two separate private collectors: Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) to Baron Willem van
Dedem and Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) to a private collection in the Netherlands.
The paintings remained apart until 2007 when they were reunited at The Leiden Collection.
7. Spectacles Seller (Allegory of Sight), which was in an English collection around 1900, wasfirst published in Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of
Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 1, 1625–1631, ed. J. Bruyn et al. (The Hague, 1982), 1:410-415,
no. B3. At that time it was in the D.H. Cevat Collection in Guernsey. It subsequently went to a
private collection in Leiden before being acquired by Museum De Lakenhal in 2012. Thisacquisition was published by Volker Manuth in the Vereniging Rembrandt Bulletin 22/2
(2012): 16–21.
8. This monogram was discovered by Ambrose Naumann.
9. The use of smelling salts or some sort of ammonia-based compound was (and remains) a© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 14 of 23

method for reviving unconscious people that can be traced back to Roman antiquity. In
Rembrandt’s time, several handbooks and apothecary manuals existed with instructions on
how to make sal armoniacum, and it is likely that smelling salts with this penetrating smell
were widely available. It is even reasonable to suppose that painters would have had it on
hand, since it was a key ingredient to generate certain colors.
10. His was a multi-dimensional profession. Patients would not only come to barber-surgeons forbloodletting, but also for tooth pulling, haircuts and cosmetic procedures.
11. This interpretation differs from that presented in Ilona van Tuinen, Jordaens Rembrandt:
Two New Early Works, Paris, 2016, 26, where it is suggested that the patient has fainted
after the bloodletting had occurred.
12. This posture can be seen, for instance, in A Young Woman Being Bled , a black chalkdrawing that Willem Buytwech executed in 1616 (Teylers Museum, Haarlem, inv. O* 23). It
also appears in Egbert van Heemskerck’s painting Portrait of the Barber Jacob Fransz
Hercules and his Family in his Barbershop , 1669, oil on canvas, 70 x 59 cm, Amsterdam
Museum, Amsterdam, inv. SA 2121 (figure 8).
13. See Ger Luijten, cat. entry for Constantijn Daniel van Renesse,The Quack, 1651, in Mirrorof Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands, 1550–1700 , ed. Eddy de Jongh and Ger
Luijten (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (Ghent, 1997), no. 60, 295–298.
14. Lucas van Leyden, The Surgeon, 1524, engraving, 11.7 x 7.6 cm (clipped impression),
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. See Ger Luijten, cat. entry for Constantijn Daniel
van Renesse, The Quack, 1651, in Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands,
1550–1700, ed. Eddy de Jongh and Ger Luijten (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)(Ghent, 1997), no. 60, 295.
15. Cynthia Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath, in Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her
World, ed. James A. Welu (Exh. cat. Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum; Worcester, Worcester
Art Museum) (Zwolle, 1993), 310. Nevertheless, as noted by Henriette Rahusen, the Dutch
word for “stone” is “steen,” and even today the Dutch describe a boil with pus as a“steenpuist.” Thus, it is possible that “stone operations” also removed such unwanted
protrusions.
16. In Dutch, the phrase “keeping time” (de maat slaan) was etymologically related to“temperance” (matigheid). See: Jane R. Stevens, “Hands, Music, and Meaning in SomeSeventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings,” Imago Musicae 1 (1984): 75–102; P. J. J. van Thiel,“Marriage Symbolism in a Musical Party by Jan Miense Molenaer,” Simiolus 2 (1967–68):
91–99.
17. Peter C. Sutton, Dutch and Flemish Paintings: The Collection of Willem Baron van Dedem(London, 2002), 199. See also Jane R. Stevens, “Hands, Music, and Meaning in SomeSeventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings,” Imago Musicae 1 (1984): 75–102; P. J. J. van Thiel,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 15 of 23“Marriage Symbolism in a Musical Party by Jan Miense Molenaer,” Simiolus 2 (1967–68):
91–99
18. One also finds depictions of lovers embracing or figures fighting.
19. Daniel R. Curtis, “Was Plague an Exclusively Urban Phenomenon? Plague Mortality in theSeventeenth-Century Low Countries,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 47 (2)(2016):
139–70.
20. Vitale Bloch, “Zum frühen Rembrandt.” Oud Holland 50 (1933): 97–102. The information
about Schneider is found in Abraham Bredius, Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the
Paintings, edited by Horst Gerson (London, 1969), 587, no. 421.
21. Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “Introduction,” in Dutch and Flemish Old Masters in the Collection of
Dr. C. J .K. van Aalst, Huis-te-Hoevelaken , ed. J. W. von Moltke (Verona, 1939), x. See also
in this catalogue pp. 266 and 330, plates 64 and 78.
22. The Baptism of the Eunuch , 1626, oil on panel, 64 x 47.5 cm, Museum Catharijneconvent,Utrecht; Balaam and the Ass, 1626, oil on panel, 63 x 47 cm, Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris.
23. Gerard Knuttel, Rembrandt: De meester en zijn werk . Amsterdam, 1956, 240; Jacob
Rosenberg, “Die Rembrandt Austellungen in Holland,” Kunstkronik 9 (1956): 346.
24. Kurt Bauch, Der frühe Rembrandt und sein Zeit: Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutungseines Frühstils (Berlin, 1960), 227–29; Kurt Bauch, Rembrandt: Gemälde (Berlin, 1966),
48.
25. M. L .Wurfbain and B. Haak, eds., Rondom Rembrandt: De verzameling Daan Cevat (Exh.
cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) (Leiden, 1968), 26–27. Abraham Bredius,
Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings, edited by Horst Gerson (London, 1969),
587, nos. 421, 421A.
26. Rembrandt and His Pupils: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings Commemorating the 500th
Anniversary of Rembrandt, (Exh. cat. Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts; Toronto, Art Gallery of
Ontario, 1969), nos. 2, 3. Julius Held, “Die Ausstellung ‘Rembrandt and His Pupils’ inMontreal und Toronto,” Pantheon 27 (1969): 387.
27. R. E. O. Ekkart and M. L. Wurfbain, eds., Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626 (Exh. cat.
Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) (Leiden, 1976), 70–71, nos. S28A and S28B.
28. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol.
1, 1625–1631, ed. J. Bruyn et al. (The Hague, 1982), 1:399–404, 405–11, nos. B1 and B2.
For diagrams of the overpainted areas on these paintings, see figure 4 in each entry.
29. The conservation report by the Dutch restorer, Menno Dooijes, is on file at The Leiden
Collection.
30. In 1986 Pieter Klein undertook dendrochronological examination of the two paintings anddetermined that the core panels of Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) and Three© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 16 of 23

Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) came from the same tree. He noted that the latest growthrings dated to 1597, and postulated a felling date of about 1612. He also determined that theadded panels came from the same tree and the youngest growth rings were from 1657. He
postulated a felling date of about 1674. His report is on file at The Leiden Collection.
Dendrochronological examination by Ian Tyers undertaken in October 2016, after theacquisition of Allegory of Smell, added more specifics and revised the dating of the added
panel surrounding Allegory of Hearing (unfortunately, the added panel surrounding Allegoryof Touch has, in the interim, been lost). Tyers concluded that the core panels used forAllegory of Hearing and Allegory of Touch came from the same oak tree originating in theeastern Baltic region. As with Klein, he determined that the latest growth ring present on thetwo panels was 1597, but he concluded that they came from a tree that was felled after ca.
1605.
The results of Tyers’ examinations of the added panels ofAllegory of Hearing and Allegoryof Smell indicate that they came also from the same tree. The latest growth ring Tyers found
was 1705, and he concluded that the outer boards of Allegory of Hearing and Allegory of
Smell came from a tree that was felled after ca. 1713. Since Klein had determined that theadded panels on Allegory of Hearing and Allegory of Touch were from the same tree, it canbe safely assumed that the extensions on all three panels were done at the same time.
31. Pigment analysis carried out in 1987–88 by J.A. Mosk at the Centraal Laboratorium voor
Voorwerpen van Kunst en Wetenschap in Amsterdam revealed that the extensions andoverpainted areas of Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing) contained the pigment Berlin
blue, which was not commonly used until about 1720 (report on file in The Leiden
Collection).
32. A comparable decision to remove the surrounding addition had been made in the early
1930s with the restoration of Spectacles Seller (Allegory of Sight) by Fa. Schuuring in The
Hague (information from the conservation report by Menno Dooijes, on file at The Leiden
Collection). For diagrams of the overpainted areas on Allegory of Hearing and Allegory of
Smell prior to their restoration in the late 1980s, see: Stichting Foundation Rembrandt
Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol. 1, 1625–1631, ed. J. Bruyn et al.
(The Hague, 1982), 1:399–404, 405–11, nos. B1 and B2.
33. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol.
4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering et al. (Dordrecht, 2005), 4:627, nos. I B1 and I
B2.
34. Bernhard Schnackenburg, “Young Rembrandt’s ‘Rough Manner’: A Painting Style and Its
Sources,” in The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt , ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Bernhard
Schnackenburg (Exh. cat. Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis) (Wolfratshausen, 2001), 100.
35. See Roelof van Straten, Rembrandts Leidse Tijd 1606–1632 (Leiden, 2005), 29–30© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 17 of 23

36. Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “Foreword,” in Dutch and Flemish Old Masters in the Collection of
Dr. C. J. K. van Aalst, Huis-te-Hoevelaken , ed. J. W. von Moltke (Verona, 1939), xi; Otto
Benesch, “An Early Group Portrait Drawing by Rembrandt,” Art Quarterly 3 (1940): 10; Otto
Benesch, Collected Writings, ed. Eva Benesch, 4 vols. (London, 1970), 1:177; Bob van de
Boogert, in The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt , ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Bernhard
Schnackenburg (Exh. cat. Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis) (Wolfratshausen, 2001), 152; Chrstiaan Vogelaar, in Rembrandt’s Mother:
Myth and Reality, ed. Christiaan Vogelaar and Gerbrand Korevaar (Exh. cat. Leiden,
Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 2005), 14.
37. Otto Benesch, “An Early Group Portrait Drawing by Rembrandt,” Art Quarterly 3 (1940): 10.
Benesch qualified the influence of Van Honthorst’s Caravaggism on Rembrandt generally as
filtered through the work of Jacques Callot, who had produced candlelight scenes. Van
Straten notes that Rembrandt could have seen Callot’s work during the annual Leiden Fair.
See Roelof van Straten, Rembrandts Leidse Tijd 1606–1632 (Leiden, 2005), 27.
38. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” inJan Lievens:
A Dutch Master Revisited, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National
GalleryofArt;

Milwaukee,

MilwaukeeArt

Museum;Amsterdam,

MuseumHet

Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 6.
39. On Rembrandt’s apprenticeship with Van Swanenburg, see Ernst van de Wetering andBernhard Schnackenburg, eds., The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt (Exh. cat. Kassel,
Museumslandschaft Hessen; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (Wolfratshausen,
2001), 32–37.
40. Ernst van de Wetering and Bernhard Schnackenburg, eds., The Mystery of the Young
Rembrandt (Exh. cat. Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis) (Wolfratshausen, 2001), 39. Rembrandt and Lievens are even often
presumed to have jointly occupied a studio in the late 1620s owing to the great, andsometimes confusing, similarities of their work at the time. (See S. W. A Drossaers and Th.
H. Lusingh Scheurleer, Inventarissen van de inboedels in de verblijven de Oranjes en
daarmede gelijke stellen stukken, 1567–1795 , 3 vols. [The Hague, 1974–76], 1:186). Thereis no direct evidence, however, to support the notion that they shared a studio. As Wheelock
has argued, neither Jan Orlers nor Constantijn Huygens, from whom we derive mostinformation on the two artists’ early careers, mention anything about a joint space, and theiraccounts strongly suggest that the painters worked independently. See Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr., “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” inJan Lievens: A Dutch Master
Revisited, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (NewHaven, 2008), 11.
41. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” inJan Lievens:© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 18 of 23

A Dutch Master Revisited, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National
GalleryofArt;

Milwaukee,

MilwaukeeArt

Museum;Amsterdam,

MuseumHet

Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 11
42. C. L. Heesakkers, ed., Constantijn Huygens, Mijn jeugd (Amsterdam, 1987), 70–90. Quoted
in Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Beginnings: An Essay,” in The Mystery of theYoung Rembrandt, ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Bernhard Schnackenburg (Exh. cat.
Kassel,Museumslandschaft

Hessen;Amsterdam,

MuseumHet

Rembrandthuis)(Wolfratshausen, 2001), 26.
43. The appearance of Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) and Spectacles Seller (Allegory ofSight) before the removal of the painted additions can be seen in Stichting Foundation
Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol. 1, 1625–1631, ed. J.
Bruyn et al. (The Hague, 1982), 1:406 and 410. In Spectacles Seller a tall curtain appearedon the left and a mirror on the right, and in Stone Operation the cupboard on the left
extended onto the addition, much as in Unconscious Patient.
44. Quentin Buvelot and Otto Naumann, “Format Changes by Frans van Mieris the Elder,”Burlington Magazine 150 (February 2008): 102–4.
45. See Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings ,vol. 1, 1625–1631, ed. J. Bruyn et al. (The Hague, 1982), 1:92.

Provenance
Private collection, England.
Dr. Cornelis Johannes Karel van Aalst (1866–1939), Hoevelaken, by 1939, by descent to his
son Nicolaas Johannes van Aalst, Hoevelaken and Breda [on consignment with G. Cramer
Oude Kunst Gallery, The Hague, 1965–79].
Willem van Aalst, The Netherlands, bought from the descendants of Nicolaas Johannes van
Aalst, 1984.
Private collection, Switzerland (sale, Christie’s, London, 7 July 1995, no. 57 [for £386,500]).
Edgar James Swaab (b. 1958), The Netherlands, until 2007.
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Exhibition History© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
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Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, “Rembrandt als Leermeester,” 1 June–1 September 1956,
no. 3 [lent by Mr. Nicolaas Johannes van Aalst, Hoevelaken].
Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts, “Rembrandt and His Pupils: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings
Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of Rembrandt,” 9 January–23 February 1969;
Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 14 March–27 April 1969, no. 3 [lent by G. Cramer Oude
Kunst Gallery, The Hague].
Delft, Prinsenhof, “25e Oude Kunst- En Antiekbeurs: Der Vereeniging van Handelaren in
Oude Kunst in Nederland,” 30 August–19 September 1973, no. 64 [lent by G. Cramer Oude
Kunst Gallery, The Hague].
Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, “Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626,” 7 December 1976–9
January 1977, no. S28B [lent by G. Cramer Oude Kunst Gallery, The Hague].
Yokohama, Sogo Museum of Art, “Rembrandt and the Bible,” 31 October–23 December
1986; Fukuoka, Fukuoka Art Museum, 6 January–1 February 1987; Kyoto, Kyoto National
Museum of Modern Art, 7 February–22 March 1987, no. 2 [lent by Willem van Aalst, The
Netherlands].
Stockholm, National Museum, “Rembrandt och hans tid: Människan i Centrum/Rembrandt
and His Age: Focus on Man,” 2 October 1992–6 January 1993, no. 47 [lent by Willem van
Aalst, The Netherlands].
Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, on loan with the permanent collection (“Rembrandtjaar”),
2006, no. B146 [lent by Edgar James Swaab, the Netherlands].
Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, “Rembrandt: The Quest for Chiaroscuro,” 12March–12 June 2011; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum, 25 June–4 September 2011 [lentby present owner].
Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Rembrandt in America,” 30 October 2011–22
January 2012; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 19 February–28 May 2012;
Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 24 June–16 September 2012 [lent by the present
owner].
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, on loan with the permanent collection, December
2012–December 2013 [lent by the present owner].
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, “Emotions: Pain and Pleasure in Dutch Painting of theGolden Age,” 11 October 2012–15 February 2015, no. 24 [lent by the present owner].
Worcester, Worcester Art Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, 15 February
2015–1 February 2016 [lent by the present owner].
Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, “The Promise of Youth: Rembrandt’s ‘Senses’
Rediscovered,” 11 May–28 August 2016 [lent by the present owner].
Oxford, University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, on loan with thepermanent collection, 1 September–30 November 2016 [lent by the present owner].
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
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Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, “Rembrandt’s First Paintings: The Four Senses,”
12 December 2016–2 February 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,”
22 February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden
Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lentby the present owner].

References
Von Moltke, J. W. Dutch and Flemish Old Masters in the Collection of Dr. C. J. K. van
Aalst, Huis te Hoevelaken. Verona, 1939, x–xi, 266, 330, no. 78.
Benesch, Otto. “An Early Group Portrait by Rembrandt.” Art Quarterly 3 (1940): 3, 11, no. 8.
Kaufmann, Hans. “Die Fünfsinne in der niederländischen Malerei der 17 Jahrhunderts.”
Kunstgeschichtliche Studien (1944): 145–46.
Benesch, Otto. “Caravaggism in the Drawings of Rembrandt.” In Extrait des Actes duXVIIème Congrès International d’Histoire de l’Art . The Hague, 1955. Reprinted in Otto
Benesch, Collected Writings. New York, 1970, 175–89, no. 106.
Knuttel, Gerard. Rembrandt: De Meester en Zijn Werk . Amsterdam, 1956, 240, as not by
Rembrandt.
Van Gelder, Jan G., Gerson, Horst, De Vries, Ary Bob, Van Wessem, Jan Nicolas andJoosten, Joop M., eds.

Rembrandt als Leermeester . Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De

Lakenhal. Leiden, 1956, 14–15, no. 3.
Rosenberg, Jakob. “Die Rembrandt Ausstellungen in Holland.” Kunstkronik 9 (1956): 354,
as a copy after Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Der frühe Rembrandt und sein Zeit: Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutungseines Frühstils. Berlin, 1960, 227–29, no. 192, as by School of Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Rembrandt: Gemälde. Berlin, 1966, 48, under no. 421, as in the manner ofGerrit Dou.
Wurfbain, Maarten L. and Haak, Bob, eds. Rondom Rembrandt de verzameling Daan
Cevat. Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal. Leiden, 1968, 26–27, under no. 37.
Bruyn, Josua and Carter, David eds. Rembrandt and His Pupils: A Loan Exhibition of
Paintings Commemorating the 300th Anniversary of Rembrandt . Exh. cat. Montreal,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
Page 21 of 23

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario. Montreal, 1969, 62, no. 3.
Held, Julius. “Die Ausstellung Rembrandt and His Pupils in Montreal und Toronto.”
Pantheon 27 (1969): 387.
Arpino, Giovanni and Lecaldano, Paolo. L’opera pittorica complete di Rembrandt . Milan,
1969, 129.
Bredius, Abraham and Gerson, Horst. Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings .
London, 1969, 338, 587, no. 421A.
25e Oude Kunst- En Antiekbeurs: Der Vereeniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst in
Nederland. Exh. cat. Delft, Prinsenhof. Kassel, 1973, 64.
Ekkart, Rudolf Erik Otto and Wurfbain, Maartin L. Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626 . Exh.
cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal. Leiden, 1976, 70–71, no. S28B.
Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings . Vol.
1, 1625–1631.

Edited by Josua Bruyn et al. The Hague, Boston, and London, 1982,

405–11, no. B2.
Schwartz, Gary. Rembrandt, His Life, His Paintings: A New Biography with All Accessible
Paintings Illustrated in Colour. New York, 1985, 34, no. 14. Originally published as
Rembrandt, zijn leven, zijne schilderijen: Ein nieuwe biografie, met all beschikbare
schilderijen in kleur afgebeeld. Maarsen, 1984.
Tümpel, Christian. Rembrandt: Mythos und Methode. Antwerp, 1986, 30–31, 423, A28, as
by an early follower of Rembrandt.
Brown, Christopher, ed. Rembrandt and the Bible. Exh. cat. Yokohama, Sogo Museum ofArt; Fukuoka, Fukuoka Art Museum; Kyoto, Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art. Tokyo,
1986, 55, 134, 152, no. 2.
Brown, Christopher. “Mästaren och hans ateljé.” In Rembrandt och hans tid: Människan iCentrum/Rembrandt and His Age: Focus on Man.

Edited by Görel Caveli-Björkman,

176–79, no. 47. Exh. cat. Stockholm, National Museum. Stockholm, 1992.
Tümpel, Christian. Rembrandt: All Paintings in Colour . Antwerp, 1993, 30–31, 426, A28, as
by an early follower of Rembrandt.
Broos, Ben, ed. The Amateur’s Cabinet: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Masterpieces from
Dutch Private Collections. Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis. The Hague, 1995, 50–51, no.
21.2.
Van den Boogert, Bob. “The Operation (Touch).” In The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt .
Edited by Bernhard Schnackenburg and Ernst van de Wetering, 154–55, no. 10. Exh. cat.
Kassel, Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; Amsterdam, Museum
Het Rembrandthuis. Wolfratshausen, 2001.
Sutton, Peter C. Dutch and Flemish Paintings: The Collection of Willem Baron van Dedem .
London, 2002, 198–201, no. 42a.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch)
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Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings . Vol.
4, Self-Portraits. Edited by Ernst van de Wetering. Dordrecht, 2005, 627, no. I B2.
Vogelaar, Christiaan and Korevaar, Gerbrand, eds.

Rembrandt’s Mother: Myth andReality. Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal. Leiden and Zwolle, 2005, 14, no. 4.
Van Straten, Roelof. Young Rembrandt: The Leiden Years, 1606–1632 . Originallypublished as Rembrandt’s Leidse Tijd, 1606–1632. Leiden, 2005, 29–31, no. 15.
Van den Boogert, Bob. “The Stone Operation (Touch).” In Rembrandt: The Quest for
Chiaroscuro. Edited by Akira Kofuku, 216–17, 347–48, no. 81. Exh. cat. Tokyo, National
Museum of Western Art; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum. Tokyo, 2011.
Rassieur, Tom. “Rembrandt in the Seventeenth Century.” In Rembrandt in America:
Collecting and Connoisseurship, 33, 89–92, 108. Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museumof Art; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. New
York, 2011.
Weller, Dennis P. “Rembrandt’s History Paintings in America.” In Rembrandt in America:
Collecting and Connoisseurship, 167, 173, no. 2. Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museumof Art; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. New
York, 2011.
Schwartz, Gary. Emotions: Pain and Pleasure in Dutch painting of the Golden Age . Exh.
cat. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum. Rotterdam, 2014, 35, 114, no. 24.
Golahny, Amy. “Rembrandt and ‘Everyday Life.’” In Genre Imagery in Early Modern
Northern Europe: New Perspectives. Edited by Arthur J. DiFuria. New York, 2016, 162–65,
no. 7.1.
Van Tuinen, Ilona. Jordaens Rembrandt: Two New Early Works. Paris, 2016.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular-shaped Baltic oak with no bevels,
has been thinned. Narrow vertically grained wood shims glued to all four sides have been toned
black along the front surface and obscure the panel edges. Animal glue residue along thereverse indicates the panel was previously adhered to an auxiliary support. There are no wax
seals, import stamps, stencils, labels or panel maker’s marks along the reverse.
This panel was previously set into a four-sided, rectangular, frame-shaped wood addition, on
which the painted composition had been extended. This extension, which measured 31.7 x 25.3
cm., included the cupboard, the rear wall, the back of the figure with the candle, and the patient’s
lower leg. The sides of the enlargement were unequal in width, measuring, respectively, at thelower, upper, left, and right edges: 1.4 cm, 8.6 cm, 3.6 cm, and 3.6 cm. In 1987–88 the addedpanel

surroundwasremovedwhen

thepainting

wasrestored.[1]

By

that

time,

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dendrochronological examinations undertaken by Pieter Klein had demonstrated that the core
image was painted on an oak panel datable to the early seventeenth century and that the added
panel was much later in date, likely from the late seventeenth-century.[2] Unfortunately, theremoved panel is now lost.
The oak panel support is covered by a thin ground, presumably natural chalk, i.e., calcium
carbonate. A brown imprimatur layer, visible in the background of the image, was subsequently
applied with wide horizontal strokes. The figures and foreground elements are executed in
opaque layers of paint. No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at
780–1000 nanometers.
The x-radiograph reveals two minor compositional changes. The angle of the fingers of the figure
holding the candle were originally diagonally oriented rather than horizontally as seen now. In
addition, the upper contour of the patient’s head has been shifted downward slightly, or the
figure’s forearm resting over the patient’s head was previously light-colored. The figures and thepaint in the background are well preserved. The painting, which is unsigned and undated, has
not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2007.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The conservation report by the Dutch restorer, Menno Dooijes, is on file at the Leiden
Collection.
2. Klein’s report is on file at The Leiden Collection. A comparable decision to remove thesurrounding addition had been made in the early 1930s with the restoration ofSpectacles
Seller (Allegory of Sight) by Fa. Schuuring in The Hague (information from the conservation
report by Menno Dooijes, on file at The Leiden Collection). For an image of the painting’s
appearance and a diagram of the overpainted areas prior to its restoration in the late 1980s,
see: Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings ,vol. 1, 1625–1631, ed. J. Bruyn et al. (The Hague, 1982), 1:399–404, no. B1.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection