Head of a Girl
Rembrandt van Rijn
(Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam)ca. 1645
oil on panel
20.8 x 17.4 cm
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How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. “Head of a Girl” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited
by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/(archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

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With a tender expression accentuated by her tilted head and slightly parted lips, theComparative Figures

girl in this bust-length image gazes downward to the left. Strong light falling from theupper left illuminates her face and the broad, cream-colored kerchief draped looselyaround her neck, while a subtle, reflected light models the shaded areas of her cheekand chin. Executed in both thick impastos and thin, translucent paints, this rapidly
executed oil study has a compelling presence that belies its small scale.
Wilhelm von Bode was the first scholar in the first half of the twentieth century to
publish this engaging head study as Rembrandt’s.[1] In 1948, Jacob Rosenberg argued
that this sketch was Rembrandt’s preliminary study for Mary in his Holy Family,
1645, in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (fig 1). Indeed, the positionof Mary’s head, her expression, and the character of the direct and indirect lightilluminating her face are almost identical to that of the young girl in the oil study (fig2). Since the 1960s, however, most art historians have argued that this oil study is a

Fig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn, Holy
Family, 1645, oil on canvas, 116.4 x
96.4 cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. 741

freely executed copy of Mary in Holy Family by a member of Rembrandt’s workshop
and not Rembrandt’s preliminary study for that figure.[2] The painting has been
associated with a number of Rembrandt’s students, including Carel Fabritius(1622–54), Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–78), and Nicolaes Maes (1634–93), but
none of these proposed attributions has proved to be compelling.[3] As a consequence,
the identification of the artist responsible for this engaging oil study remains anenigma.[4]The question of whether or not this bust is Rembrandt’s preliminary study or a copy
by a workshop assistant relates to a larger problem within Rembrandt scholarship. As
Ernst van de Wetering has demonstrated, Rembrandt often made preparatory studies[5]of figures for his paintings to work out patterns of light and shade. In these studies
he was particularly interested in rendering light that had been reflected into shadowed

Fig 2. Detail, Rembrandt van Rijn,
Holy Family, 1645, oil on canvas,
116.4 x 96.4 cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. 741

areas of the face. Michiel Franken has argued, however, that Rembrandt also
encouraged his students to make partial copies after his compositions, and to alter
these copies so that they could pass as tronies in their own right.[6] It is not always easy
to tell the difference between these two types of oil sketches, and debates about their
attributions are some of the most complicated issues in Rembrandt studies.
Careful comparisons of the Leiden Collection’s Head of a Girl and the figure of Maryin Holy Family support Rosenberg’s conclusion that this sketch is a preliminary study
for the Hermitage painting and not a copy after it. For example, the strokes of whitepaint evident above the girl’s head, which are also visible in the X-radiograph (fig 3),
indicate that the artist initially provided her with a small bonnet rather than the larger
headdress worn by Mary in the final composition. The X-radiograph also reveals

Fig 3. X-radiograph of Head of a Girl,
RR-112changes in the position of the white cloth to the left of the girl’s face, an unlikely© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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occurrence should the Leiden Collection painting be a copy. Other differences exist
between the oil sketch and the final composition, including the girl’s hairstyle, which
is not parted in the middle as is the case with Mary. Mary leans more forward thandoes the girl in the oil study, a difference in pose that is evident in the position ofMary’s right shoulder, which is higher than that of the girl in the oil sketch. Also
revealing is the shape of the young girl’s neckline. In the Hermitage painting Mary
wears a straight-edged bodice, but a visible pentimento in this area reveals that her
neckline was V-shaped, exactly as in the oil sketch from the Leiden Collection.[7]Finally, the handling of paint, which includes both impastos and thin areas in the
shadows that reveal the underlying ocher ground layer, is consistent with Rembrandt’s
manner and not with a copy. The subtle nuances of reflected light in the shaded
portion of the girl’s face are also comparable to those found on Rembrandt’s other oil
studies.[8]Fig 4. Rembrandt van Rijn, Head ofChrist, ca. 1648, oil on panel,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv.
811C, © Foto: Gemäldegalerie derStaatlichen Museen zu
Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Fotograf/in: Volker-H. Schneider

Nowhere in Rembrandt’s oeuvre does one find so many correlations between an oil
sketch and the initial appearance of one of Rembrandt’s compositions as in thisinstance. Indeed, all of the other the oil sketches that Franken describes as workshop
copies are based on one of the master’s completed compositions, not on an initialstage in the creative process. Franken argues that the Leiden Collection oil study was
made by a copyist who adapted his image so that it could function as “a ‘tronie’ in its
own right,” but this conclusion seems improbable since the oil study so closelyreflects Holy Family’s underlying design. Van den Boogert and Van de Wetering,recognizing this fact, maintain that Head of a Girl was executed by a member ofRembrandt’s workshop before Rembrandt had worked out his final composition for
the Hermitage painting.[9] As evidence to support their theory, they contend that an
infrared reflectogram of the girl’s head reveals a fairly detailed underdrawing in black
chalk or charcoal, a technique that Rembrandt is not known to have used.[10] Theirreading of the reflectogram, however, mistakenly interpreted the black lines seen in
the image as underdrawings rather than strokes of carbon-containing paint used tomodel the girl’s features. After one discounts this faulty interpretation of thereflectogram, there are, in fact, no compositional or technical reasons for questioning
the attribution of this oil sketch to Rembrandt.
A fundamental question when considering the attribution is whether the work is
stylistically consistent with Rembrandt’s oil studies from the mid-1640s. This issue isparticularly important because no Rembrandt scholar has attributed the painting to themaster since 1966, when Bauch deemed the painting to be a partial copy after
Rembrandt’s Holy Family. In this respect, the historical situation related to Head of aGirl parallels that of a number of other oil sketches that have been considered to bepartial copies by pupils, but that actually may have been preliminary studies
Rembrandt made for history paintings. Van de Wetering has identified a number of© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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these, mostly expressive head studies that demonstrate a quick and fluid touch, often
boldly executed with thick impastos.[12] Van de Wetering, however, has not
reattributed Head of a Girl to Rembrandt, and he, like other recent Rembrandt
scholars, considers it to be a copy by a member of Rembrandt’s workshop.[13]The reason that scholars have resisted attributing this oil sketch to Rembrandt may bethat the young woman is more carefully rendered than the preliminary oil sketches
generally associated with Rembrandt’s hand, all of which are boldly and expressively
brushed. Indeed, Head of a Girl has the character of a figure study rather than a quick
compositional sketch. In this respect it resembles the various head studies of Christthat Rembrandt and his workshop painted from a young Jewish model in the late1640s, none of which were actually preliminary studies for paintings. A particularly
close comparison to Head of a Girl is the Head of Christ from Berlin (fig 4). Bothyoung models are posed looking down and to the right, their averted gazes evoking a
sense of mystery and inward reflection.[14] Their features are similarly rendered, as is
the application of paint. In each instance the face has been worked up from a brown
monochrome sketch, which has been left exposed in the temple and in the shaded
portions of the nose and proper right eye socket. The foreheads and cheekbones ofboth figures have been comparably enlivened with freely brushed impastos.
Thus, in addition to its high quality, the stylistic, compositional, and technicalcharacter of this compelling head study warrant defending its attribution to
Rembrandt. It is probable that the master executed this painting around 1645 as apreparatory study for the figure of Mary in Holy Family.[15]- Ilona van Tuinen, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 2017

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Endnotes
1. Wilhelm von Bode and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, The Complete Work of Rembrandt, 8 vols. (Paris,
1897–1906), 5: 29, 156, no. 373, dated the painting to “about 1650.” The attribution to Rembrandt was
subsequently upheld by Wilhelm Valentiner and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot. See Wilhelm R.
Valentiner, Rembrandt: beschreibendes Verzeichniss seiner Gemälde mit den heliographischen
Nachbildungen: Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst [The Complete Work of Rembrandt, History,
Description and Heliographic Reproduction of All the Master’s Pictures, with a Study of His Life], 406,
562, 576 (where he mentioned a faint date of 1653 on the panel, albeit “undeutlich und nich ganz
zweifellos” a date which can no longer be detected or has since disappeared, and which does not appear
to have been original); Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most
Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, ed. and trans.
Edward G. Hawke. 8 vols. London, 1907–28, originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols.
(Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28), 6: 251, no. 495. In 1935, however, Abraham Bredius, Rembrandt:
Gemälde (Vienna, 1935), no. 375, expressed some doubts about the Rembrandt attribution.
2. Jakob Rosenberg, Rembrandt, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1948), 51, 122, fig. 165 (rev. ed. [London, 1968], 91, 196,
198, fig. 163).
3. In 1966 Kurt Bauch, Rembrandt: Gemälde (Berlin, 1966), 48, no. 375, considered the painting to be apartial copy after Holy Family executed in the “manner of Fabritius,” while Werner Sumowski, “Zueinem Gemälde von Carel Fabritius,” Pantheon 26, no. 4 (1968): 282–83, firmly attributed it to Carel
Fabritius. Subsequently, Sumowski reassessed the attribution and gave it to Nicolaes Maes beforechanging his mind and identifying it as a work by Samuel van Hoogstraten. See Werner Sumowski,
Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau, 1983–94), 3:2008, under no. 1322, as by Nicolaes
Maes; 6: 3627, under no. 1322, as by Samuel van Hoogstraten. Bob van den Boogert, “Rembrandt
Werkstatt: Kopf eines Mädchens (Teilkopie nach Die Heilige Familie mit den Engeln),” in Rembrandt:
Genie auf der Suche, ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Jan Kelch (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Berlin, 2006), 334–35, no. 47,
argued that the work was a copy of an earlier stage of the Holy Family, possibly by Van Hoogstraten. In
2000, Léon Krempel listed this oil sketch among the doubtful attributions to Nicolaes Maes in his
monograph on the artist, but, in 2010, he described it as “attributed to” Maes. See León Krempel,
Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693): Studien zu den datierten Gemälden (Petersberg, 2000), 334–35, no. B 12,
fig. 356; Marlene Dumas, Chris Dercon, and Léon Krempel, Tronies: Marlene Dumas and the Old
Masters (Exh. cat. Munich, Haus der Kunst) (Düsseldorf, 2010), 36, 108. On 10 November 2010
Krempel sent an email to the Leiden Collection indicating that he attributed the painting to Maes
(curatorial files, The Leiden Collection, New York).
4. Neither Horst Gerson, in Abraham Bredius and Horst Gerson, Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Paintings (London, 1969), 541, 579, no. 375; nor Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt: The Holy Family,
1645,” in Ernst van de Wetering et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 5: Small-Scale History
Paintings, Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Dordrecht, 2011), 5: 371–78, no. V 4,
copy 1, attribute the painting to a specific artist from Rembrandt’s workshop.
5. Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Oil Studies: New Light on an Old Problem,” in Rembrandt: Questof a Genius, ed. Bob van den Boogert (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Zwolle, 2006), 179–207.
6. Michiel Franken, “Learning by Imitation: Copying Paintings in Rembrandt’s Workshop,” in Rembrandt:
Quest of a Genius, ed. Bob van den Boogert (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Zwolle, 2006), 153–77, particularly 169–70. See also
Michiel Franken, “Lernen durch Nachahmung: Űber das Kopieren von Gemälden in Rembrandts
Werkstatt,” in Rembrandt: Genie auf der Suche, ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Jan Kelch (Exh. cat.
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Berlin,2006), 145–63, particularly 156–57.
7. The presence of the V-shaped neckline confirms that the New York painting was executed around 1645,
the date of the Hermitage painting, which makes an attribution to Nicolaes Maes, who studied with
Rembrandt between 1649 and 1653, implausible.
8. See Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Oil Studies: New Light on an Old Problem,” in Rembrandt:
Quest of a Genius, ed. Bob van den Boogert (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Zwolle, 2006), 179–207.
9. Bob van den Boogert, “Rembrandt Werkstatt: Kopf eines Mädchens (Teilkopie nach Die Heilige Familie
mit den Engeln),” in Rembrandt: Genie auf der Suche, ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Jan Kelch (Exh. cat.
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Berlin,
2006,) 334–35, no. 47. Ernst van de Wetering et al., “Rembrandt: The Holy Family, 1645,” in Ernst van
de Wetering et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 5: Small-Scale History Paintings, Stichting
Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Dordrecht, 2011), 371–78, no. V 4, copy 1.
10. Bob van den Boogert, “Rembrandt Werkstatt: Kopf eines Mädchens (Teilkopie nach Die Heilige Familie
mit den Engeln),” in Rembrandt: Genie auf der Suche, ed. Ernst van de Wetering and Jan Kelch (Exh. cat.
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Berlin,2006) 334–35, no. 47; Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt: The Holy Family, 1645,” in Ernst van deWetering et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 5: Small-Scale History Paintings, Stichting
Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Dordrecht, 2011), 371–78, no. V 4, copy 1, fig. 8. In thisrespect, their assessments follow the arguments of Michiel Franken, “Lernen durch Nachahmung: Űberdas Kopieren von Gemälden in Rembrandts Werkstatt,” in Rembrandt: Genie auf der Suche, ed. Ernst
van de Wetering and Jan Kelch (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Berlin, 2006), 145–63, particularly 156–57.
11. See Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, 2000), 23–32, for a
discussion of Rembrandt’s use of a preliminary monochrome modeling, often with a watery medium.
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We are grateful to Michiel Franken for relating his account of the discussion of underdrawing in
Rembrandt’s oeuvre at the technical conference at the National Gallery in London in November 2014 inconjunction with the exhibition Rembrandt: The Late Works.
12. See Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Oil Studies: New Light on an Old Problem,” in Rembrandt:
Quest of a Genius, ed. Bob van den Boogert (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (Zwolle, 2006), 179–207, particularly 196–207. In thisarticle, Van de Wetering reattributes a number of oil sketches to Rembrandt, including Weeping Woman
in the Detroit Institute of Arts, a work that recent scholars have argued was a partial copy by a memberof the workshop after the master’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1644, in the National
Gallery, London.
13. Ernst van de Wetering et al., “Rembrandt: The Holy Family, 1645,” in Ernst van de Wetering et al., A
Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 5: Small-Scale History Paintings, Stichting Foundation Rembrandt
Research Project (Dordrecht, 2011), 5: 371–78, no. V 4, copy 1.
14. See Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, ed. Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos, and George S. Keyes (Exh. cat.
Paris, Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts) (Calenzano,2011), 62–63, cat. 35.
15. The results of dendrochronological analysis of this panel have not proved particularly helpful in dating
the painting. According to Peter Klein, in a 2000 report made for Salomon Lilian, B. V., copy on file atthe Leiden Collection, New York, the youngest year ring of the panel dates to 1613 and the panel comesfrom the same tree as Rembrandt’s Old Man in Military Costume (ca. 1630–31, oil on panel, 66 x 55.9
cm, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 78.PB.246) and Supper at Emmaus (private collection). Ian
Tyers, in a report dated November 2010, copy on file at The Leiden Collection, New York, states thatthe youngest year ring of the panel dates as early as 1567.

Provenance
Sir Charles A. Turner, London, by 1898.
Paul von Schwabach (1876–1938), Berlin, by 1909 until before 1942.
Dünsing Collection, Boizenburg, by 1948 [to Frederick Mont].
[Frederick Mont, New York, 1950.]
Private collection, United States, by 1969 (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 28 January 1999, no. 236, as by
Nicolaes Maes; [to Salomon Lilian B.V.]).
[Salomon Lilian B.V., Amsterdam.]Michiel and Debbie Zwetsloot, Scotland, by 2007.
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007, as by Samuel van Hoogstraten.
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Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, “De Rembrandt Tentoonstelling te Amsterdam,” 8 September–31
October 1898, no. 82 [lent by Sir Charles A. Turner].
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, “Exhibition of Pictures by Dutch Masters of the SeventeenthCentury,” 1900, no. 48 [lent by Sir Charles A. Turner].
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, “Dutch Exhibition,” 30 March–10 May 1904, no. 156 [lent by Sir
Charles A. Turner].
Amsterdam, Salomon Lilian B.V., Amsterdam, 2000, no. 10, as by Samuel van Hoogstraten.
Amsterdam, Rembrandt House Museum, “Rembrandt, Quest of a Genius,” 1 April–2 July 2006; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 4 August–5 November 2006, no. 47, as by workshop of
Rembrandt [lent by a private collection].
Munich, Haus der Kunst, “Tronies: Marlene Dumas and the Old Masters,” 29 October 2010–6 February
2011, as attributed to Nicolaes Maes [lent by the present owner].
Washington, D.C., The National Gallery, on loan with the permanent collection, 19 October 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 [lent by the present
owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces
from The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the present
owner].

References
Stedelijk Museum. Rembrandt: schilderijen bijeengebracht ter gelegenheid van de inhuldiging van Hare
Majesteit Koningin Wilhelmina/Rembrandt: collection des oeuvres du maître réunies à l’occasion del’inauguration de S. M. la Reine Wilhelmine, au musée de la ville à Amsterdam. Exh. cat. Amsterdam,
Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam, 1898, no. 82.
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Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. De Rembrandt Tentoonstelling te Amsterdam. Exh. cat. Amsterdam,
Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam, 1898, no. 82.
Burlington Fine Arts Club. Exhibition of Pictures of Dutch Masters of the SeventeenthCentury, introduction by Walter Armstrong. Exh. cat. London, Burlington Fine Arts Club. London, 1900,
33, no. 48.
Von Bode, Wilhelm, and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot. Rembrandt: beschreibendes Verzeichniss seiner
Gemälde mit den heliographischen Nachbildungen: Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst. Paris, 1901,
5: 29, 156, no. 373.
Whitechapel Art Gallery. Whitechapel Art Gallery:“Dutch Exhibition.” Exh. cat. London, Whitechapel
Art Gallery. London, 1904, 22, no. 156.
Valentiner, Wilhelm R. and Adolf Rosenberg. Rembrandt: Des Meisters Gemälde. Stuttgart, 1909, 406,
562, 576.
Graves, Algernon. A Century of Loan Exhibitions 1813–1912. London, 1913, 4: 2144, no. 156.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of
the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke, 6:251, no. 495. London, 1916.
Bredius, Abraham. The Paintings of Rembrandt. Oxford, 1942, 1: 21, no. 375; 2: no. 375 (as of doubtful
attribution to Rembrandt).
Rosenberg, Jakob. Rembrandt. Berlin, 1948, 51, 122, no. 165.
Rosenberg, Jakob. Rembrandt: Life and Work. Rev. ed. London, 1968, 91, 196, 198, no. 163.
Bauch, Kurt. Rembrandt: Gemälde. Berlin, 1966, 48, no. 375 (as in the style of Carel Fabritius).
Sumowski, Werner. “Zu einem Gemälde von Carel Fabritius.” Pantheon 26 (1968, no. 4): 282–83 (as by
Carel Fabritius).
Bredius, Abraham. Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings. Revised by Horst Gerson. London,
1969, 541, 579, no. 375 (as by workshop of Rembrandt).
Arpino, Giovanni, and Paolo Lecaldano. L’opera pittorica complete di Rembrandt. Milan, 1969, under“altre opere rembrandtiane gia considerate dalla critica o presenti in pubbliche raccolte.”
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Vol. 3, B. Keil –J. Ovens. Landau, 1983, 2008, under no. 1322 (as by Nicholaes Maes).
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Vol. 6,
Corrigenda u. Addenda, Nachträge 2, Ortsregister, Ikonogr. Register, Bibliographie, Künstlerverzeichnis.
Landau, 1994, 3627, under no. 1322 (as by Samuel van Hoogstraten).
Van Thiel, Pieter. “De Rembrandt-tentoonstelling van 1898.” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 40 (1992):
11–93, no. 82.
Krempel, León. Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693). Petersberg, 2000, 334–35, no. B 12, no. 356 (as bypossibly Nicolaes Maes).
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Salomon Lilian B.V. Salomon Lilian: Old Masters 2000. Exh cat. Amsterdam, Salomon Lilian B.V.
Amsterdam, 2000, 24, no. 10 (as by Samuel van Hoogstraten).
Van den Boogert, Bob. “Rembrandt Werkstatt: Kopf eines Mädchens (Teilkopie nach Die Heilige
Familie mit den Engeln).” In Rembrandt: Quest of a Genius. Edited by Ernst van de Wetering et al. Exh.
cat. Amsterdam, Rembrandt House Museum; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Cologne, 2006, 334–35, no. 47 (as workshop of Rembrandt, possibly by Samuel van Hoogstraten).
Franken, Michiel. “Learning by Imitation: Copying Paintings in Rembrandt’s Workshop.” In Rembrandt:
Quest of a Genius. Edited by Bob van den Boogert. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis;
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Zwolle, 2006, 169–70 (as by school ofRembrandt).
Liedtke, Walter. “Young Woman with a Red Necklace.” Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum ofArt. New York, 2: 749–53, no. 170, n3 (as an uncertain attribution).
Van de Wetering, Ernst, et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Vol. 5, Small-Scale History Paintings.
Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Dordrecht, 2011, 374–377, figs. 6–8 (as byworkshop of Rembrandt).
Dumas, Marlene, Chriss Dercon, and Léon Krempel. Tronies: Marlene Dumas and the Old Masters. Exh.
cat. Munich, Haus der Kunst. Düsseldorf, 2010, 36, 108 (as by attributed to Nicolaes Maes).
Ducos, Blaise. “Head of a Girl.” In Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt.
Edited by Blaise Ducos and Dominique Surh. Exh. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2017, 62, no. 21.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Head of a Girl.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museumof China. Beijing, 2017, 50–51; 175, no. 16
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund. Shanghai, 2017, 69.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In The Age of Rembrandt
and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova. Translated by Daria
Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg,
The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018, 22; 32.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara “Head of a Girl.” In The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The
Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat.
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum.
Moscow, 2018, 178–79; 243, no. 56.
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019, 91–2, no. 25. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular, wedge-shaped, eastern Baltic oak derived froma tree felled after 1575, has bevels along all but the left side.[1] The upper edge has a jagged cut and may havebeen trimmed slightly. The unthinned and uncradled panel has two handwritten inscriptions and an old paperlabel, but no hand or machine toolmarks, wax seals, stencils, import stamps or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored, radio-opaque ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by a brown transparent
glaze. The paint has been applied thinly though the background and in a thick paste with low roundedbrushmarkings through the figure’s hair, face, and neck. A gap between the background paint and flesh tones
along the figure’s proper left shoulder and entire head allows a halo of the transparent brown glaze to remain
visible.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000
nanometers.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition and remains in a good state ofpreservation.
Further technical information about this artwork is available in The Rembrandt Database.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on Ian Tyers’s 2010 dendrochronology report. The panel
underwent dendrochronological analysis by Peter Klein in 2000.

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