Bust of an Old Woman

early 1630s

Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn

oil on panel
14 x 11.7 cm
signed and dated in dark paint along upper
right: “Cp 16(??)” (“C” and “p” in monogram)
RR-122© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 2 of 9

How To Cite
DeWitt, David. "Bust of an Old Woman." 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

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 3 of 9This haunting image of an old woman wearing a black, hooded garment

Comparative Figuresthat drapes over her shoulders is remarkably similar in appearance to anetching Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) made in 1628 of an aged woman
with profoundly wrinkled skin wearing a similar hooded cape that likewise
casts a shadow over her eyes (fig 1). In both the etching and the painting
the woman stares directly out at the viewer in a manner that emphasizes
her deep-set eyes and the straight lines of her nose and mouth.
Rembrandt’s model traditionally has been identified as his mother. This
identification going back to the 1679 inventory of the Amsterdam print andmap dealer Clement de Jonghe (1624/5–77), in which an etching of thiselderly woman, dated 1631, is listed as “Rembrandt’s Mother.”[1] Thissame woman appears in a number of other prints, drawings and paintings
by Rembrandt and other artists associated with him in Leiden during theFig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn, Headof an Old Woman with a Cap,
1628, etching, state 2 of 2, 63 ×64 mm, Rijksprentenkabinet,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv.
no. RP-P-1961-1195

late 1620s and early 1630s.
It is highly likely that the identification of the model in this etching as
Rembrandt’s mother is correct. Not only did Clement de Jonghe know theartist personally, but he was also a passionate collector of Rembrandt’setchings and would have known much about them. Rembrandt’s mother,Neeltgen Willemsdr, was born around 1568, which means that she would
have been about 60 years old in the late 1620s, an appropriate age for thesitter in these images. Nevertheless, despite the close similarities between
Rembrandt’s etching of 1628 and the Leiden Collection painting, it is notcertain that the same individual is depicted in both works. In the painting

Fig 2. X-radiograph of Bust of an
Old Woman, RR-122

the woman has a more elongated face, more pronounced cheek bones,
and a stronger jaw line than those of “Rembrandt’s mother.”
Despite these physiological differences, the compositional similarities
between Rembrandt’s etching of 1628 and this painting helped persuadeearlier scholars that this head study was an autograph painting byRembrandt. Strengthening that argument is the fact that these scholars
mistakenly read the monogram on the painting as an R. However, invarious publications from 1933 to 1966, Kurt Bauch cast doubt on thatFig 3. Detail of monogram at
upper right in Bust of an Old
Woman, RR-122 (photographcourtesy of Annette Rupprecht)

attribution, proposing instead that this work was painted by Jan Lievens(1607–74) and retouched by Rembrandt.[2] Subsequently, Horst Gerson
omitted the painting from his 1969 Rembrandt monograph. In 1982, theRembrandt Research Project declared it a nineteenth-century imitation ofRembrandt.[3] This assessment, however, is surely wrong, as subsequent
dendrochronological analysis has determined that the panel was available© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 4 of 9in the 1630s. The thin, translucent handling of paint, moreover, ischaracteristic of Leiden paintings from the early 1630s. Who painted thiswork, however, is a question that is difficult to answer. Despite the close
stylistic and thematic connections to Rembrandt and his workshop, thebrushwork differs from that of any of the known artists working in Leiden
around 1630, including Rembrandt, Lievens, and Gerrit Dou (1613–75).
The artist who executed this work changed the woman’s expression during
the painting process. An X-radiograph reveals that he originally portrayed
the woman with parted lips, as though she was in the act of speaking, andmodeled both eyes with lead white paint, indicating that they were not[4]originally meant to be cast in shadow (fig 2).

Why these changes weremade is not known, but the result is that the woman’s expression is moresolemn and severe than originally conceived. Her black hooded cloak

Fig 4. Pieter Codde, A Student
Smoking a Pipe, ca. 1630, oil onpanel, 46.2 × 33.4 cm, Palais desBeaux-Arts, Lille, Don Antoine
Brasseur, 1885, inv. P. 240

relates closely to those worn by Roman Catholic lay sisters, known as
klopjes.[5]Instead of being an R the monogram appears to be a lowercase P
inscribed inside a larger C (fig 3).[6] This monogram links the work to an
enigmatic painting in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, Student Smoking
a Pipe (fig 4), which has a similar inscription: a large P inscribed in a C.
That painting has long been attributed to Pieter Codde (1599–1678),
mainly on this basis. But the astonishing aesthetic performance of thiswork—in composition, color, light, description, and evocation ofemotion—outstrips even the finest examples of the respectably talented
Amsterdam genre painter. Furthermore, Codde’s typical monogram, with
the C continuing the loop of the P then proceeding back and downward,
differs markedly from that appearing in the Lille painting, and his
authorship of that work is no longer accepted.[7]The similarity of the monogram in the Leiden Collection painting appears
to provide strong evidence of a common but as of yet unidentified artist.
Nevertheless, caution about making that association is still necessary
because the appearance of these two paintings is so different.[8] The Lillepainting exhibits breathtaking coloristic sophistication, with controlledcontrasts of cool and warm hues, quite different from the overall grayish
cast of the Leiden Collection painting. The pulsating rhythms in the Lillepainting, generated by bulky fabric forms and striking curved and angular
contours, find no parallel in the stark image of Bust of an Old Woman ,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 5 of 9which depends more closely on Rembrandt’s models. The possibility of aworkshopconnection

betweentheLilleandLeiden

Collection

paintings—of master and pupil for instance—might explain the sharedmonogram, but such a hypothesis remains purely speculative.
-David DeWitt© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 6 of 9Endnotes
1. See Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings ,vol. 1, 1625–1631, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (The Hague, Boston, and London, 1982), 274.
2. Kurt Bauch, Der frühe Rembrandt und seine Zeit (Berlin, 1960), 208.
3. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol.
1, 1625–1631, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (The Hague, Boston, and London, 1982), 681–84.
4. Gerbrand Korevaar asserted that the X-radiograph shows that the eyes originally weredowncast, as in Rembrandt’s print, but the dense patches of paint containing lead-white fall
too low to read as upper eyelids, and must have represented bulging lower orbicularis oculis
muscles, suggesting surprise.
5. For a depiction of a klopje, see Jan Steen, Woman Counting Coins, ca. 1665, in the Leiden
Collection, JS-101.
6. Gerbrand Korevaar in Rembrandts moeder: Mythe en werkelijkheid , ed. Christiaan Vogelaar
and Gerbrand Korevaar (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 2005),
91, wrongly asserts that the monogram and date are later additions.
7. See Fred Meijer, The Ashmolean Museum Oxford: The Collection of Dutch and Flemish
Still Life Paintings Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward (Zwolle, 2003), 219. The museum now
ascribes the work to an anonymous follower of Rembrandt.
8. As urged by Fred Meijer in e-mail correspondence with the author, 2 November 2013.

ProvenanceGrand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna (1819–76); by descent to her daughter Elena Grigorevna
Stroganov; by descent to her children.
Mrs. Von Dehn, St. Petersburg, by 1913.
Dr. Tobias Christ, Basel, by 1928.
(Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 29 October 1998, no. 10, as Manner of Rembrandt).
[Salomon Lilian, Amsterdam, 2005].
From whom purchased by the present owner.

Exhibition History© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 7 of 9Basel, Basel Art Association, “Ausstellung von Kunstwerken des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts
aus basler Privatbesitz,” 15 April–28 May 1928, no. 145 [lent by Dr. Tobias Christ, Basel, asby Rembrandt].
Basel, Fine Arts Museum, “Meisterwerke holländischer Malerei des 16. bis 18.
Jahrhunderts,” 23 June–19 August 1945, no. 74 [lent by a private collection, Basel, as byRembrandt].
Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, “Rembrandt als Leermeester,” 1 June–1 September 1956,
no. 5 [lent by a private collection, Switzerland, as by Rembrandt].
Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, “Rembrandts Moeder: Mythe en werkelijkheid,” 16
December 2005–19 March 2006, no. 6 [lent by Salomon Lilian, Amsterdam, as circle ofRembrandt].

References
Wrangel, Baron H. H. The Legacy of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna . St. Petersburg,n.p. [ca. 1913], 56, no. 22, as by Rembrandt.
Von Liphart, Ernst Friedrich. “Reiseeindrücke.” Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst 13 (1913):
272–73, as by Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Die Kunst des jungen Rembrandt . Heidelberg, 1933, 220, as by Jan Lievens
and Rembrandt.
Bredius, Abraham. Rembrandt: Schilderijen. Utrecht, 1935, no. 65, as by Rembrandt.
Bredius, Abraham. The Paintings of Rembrandt. Vienna, 1937, no. 65, as by Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. “Rembrandt und Lievens.” Wallraf-Richardtz-Jahrbuch 11 (1939): 248–50, no.
169, as by Jan Lievens and Rembrandt.
Gelder, Van, Gerrit, Jan, Gerson, Horstand and De Vries, Ary Bob, eds. Rembrandt alsLeermeester. Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal. Leiden, 1956, 16, no. 5, as byRembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Der frühe Rembrandt und seine Zeit . Berlin, 1960, 208, as by Jan Lievens,retouched by Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Rembrandt: Gemälde. Berlin, 1966, no. A 3, as by Jan Lievens, retouched byRembrandt.
Bredius, Abraham. Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings. Revised by HorstGerson. London, 1969, no. 65, as by an unknown follower, not Lievens or Rembrandt.
Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings . Vol.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Bust of an Old Woman
Page 8 of 91, 1625–1631.

Edited by Josua Bruyn et al. The Hague, Boston, and London, 1982,681–84, no. C 43, as a nineteenth-century imitation of Rembrandt.
Korevaar, Gerbrand. In Rembrandts Moeder: Mythe en Werkelijkheid. Edited by Christiaan
Vogelaar and Gerbrand Korevaar, 88–91, no. 6, as circle of Rembrandt. Exh. cat. Leiden,Museum De Lakenhal. Zwolle, 2005

Technical SummaryThe support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular oak with a narrow wood addition
along the lower edge, has been thinned, marouflaged, and cradled.[1] The lower edge of thewood addition, extended composition, and cradle has been trimmed. The lower ends of the four
fixed vertical battens have been cut at sharp bevels, and the lowest horizontal batten has been
cut in half and is now secured with brads. No wax collection seals, paper labels, import stamps
or panel maker’s mark are along the marouflage panel or cradle.
Dendrochronology of the plank has proved inconclusive, as Peter Klein’s findings in 2008 andIan Tyers’s in 2010 arrived at significantly different evaluations. Klein identifies the plank as oakfrom the Baltic/Polish region with a plausible first use date of 1634, whereas according to Tyers,
the tree-ring sequence was not found to match eastern Baltic, western European, or other dated
or undated reference data.[2]A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied and the paint has been built up insuccessive layers with visible brushwork through the background and low impasto through thewhite shirt. The composition has been extended onto the wood addition along the lower edge.
The painting is signed with a monogram, a small P inside a large C, and dated in dark paintalong the upper right. The monogram has been previously misidentified as an R. The painting
was consistently listed in exhibition catalogues as being signed with “R” and dated 1627 upper
right and attributed to Rembrandt. This new interpretation of the monogram as a C and P has
suggested to some that the painting is by Pieter Codde.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on Ian Tyers’s 2010 and Peter Klein’s 2008
dendrochronology reports.
2. Peter Klein writes: “An earliest felling date can be derived for the year 1626, moreplausible is a felling date between 1629..1632….1636 + x. With a minimum of 2 years forseasoning an earliest creation of the painting is possible from 1628 upwards. Under theassumption of a median of 15 sapwood rings and 2 years for seasoning a creation isplausible from 1634 upwards.”© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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© 2017 The Leiden Collection