Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peterand St. Paul”)

ca. 1630

Leiden School, possibly Jan Lievens

39.1 x 31.9 cm

oil on panel
GD-101© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peter and St. Paul”)
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How To Cite
Rahusen, Henriette. "Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peter and St. Paul”)." In The Leiden Collection
Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
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Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peter and St. Paul”)
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Resting his hands on the large tome lying open on the table, an elderly

Comparative Figures

man leans toward his bearded companion across the table. Diffuse lightstreaming in from the left catches books and papers at the corner of thetable before illuminating the figures’ faces. The rest of the room remains
shrouded in relative darkness. The bearded man whose back is turned tothe viewer wears a bright red skullcap and a voluminous red robe withsilver decorations beneath his heavy dark cloak, attributes that recall thewardrobe of a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.[1] Yet, given thesuppression of Roman Catholicism in the Dutch Republic during the earlyseventeenth century (when this painting was executed), it is unlikely thatthe scene actually represents a theological exchange from those years. Afar more likely scenario is that this is a history painting, evoking animagined discussion between two elderly churchmen from another timeand place.

Fig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn, TwoScholars Disputing, 1628, oil onwood panel, 72.4 x 59.7 cm,
National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne, inv. no. 349-4

Most probably, the scene focuses upon the fundamental theologicaldispute between the apostles Peter and Paul that occurred during thesecond of their two meetings, which took place in Antioch around themiddle of the first century AD.[2] As described in Paul’s Epistle to theGalatians, Paul disputed Peter’s position that Gentile (pagan, non-Jewish)
converts to Christianity had to comply fully with the laws of the Torah inorder to obtain redemption. Peter’s position was that all converts had tofollow Jewish dietary laws and that male converts had to be circumcised,
while Paul argued that a non-Jewish convert’s faith in Christ alone wassufficient.[3]Fig 2. Jan Lievens, A Magus at aTable, ca. 1631–32, Upton
House, Warwickshire, inv.
446728, © National TrustCollections

The theological dispute between these two giants of early Christianity overthe proper practices of the faithful had great resonance in the Dutch
Republic of the 1620s, a period of acrimonious tensions between themoderate Remonstrant and hard-line Counter-Remonstrant factions within
the Dutch Calvinist community. One aspect of that controversy concerned
the appropriate level of religious tolerance that should be extended tothose who practiced faiths other than strict Calvinism. This debate not only
echoed the issues discussed by Peter and Paul in Antioch, but the way
Dutch theologians framed their arguments may also have had an impact
on the composition of this painting. Specifically, in his influential Vryegodes-dienst (Free Religion), published in 1627, Simon Episcopius, one of
the leading Dutch proponents of religious tolerance, constructed hisarguments about the benefits of religious pluralism in the form of a dispute© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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between two men.[4]The likely visual prototype for this work was Rembrandt van Rijn’s(1606–69) Two Scholars Disputing (also called St. Peter and St. Paul ),1628, in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (fig 1).[5] Not only
are the paintings similar in theme and composition, but the man wearing
the skullcap in the Leiden Collection painting also echoes—albeit inreverse—the triangular monumentality of the foreground figure in theMelbourne painting.[6] The similarities between these works indicate that
this painting was also executed in Leiden in the late 1620s, but the artist’sidentity still remains in doubt.
The attribution of Two Old Men Disputing has, in fact, confoundedscholars for generations. The painting has variously been attributed toRembrandt; Jan Lievens (1607–74); “a follower of Rembrandt, possibly
Lievens;” the “immediate circle around Rembrandt, or even more likely,that of Jan Lievens;” and in 2005 it entered the Leiden Collection as“attributed to Gerrit Dou.”[7] This level of uncertainty dates to the painting’s
earliest appearance in the literature. When Two Old Men Disputing was
sold in Paris in 1787, it was attributed to Rembrandt, but it was sold as awork by Lievens when it changed hands the following year. Over one
hundred years later, the Duke of Westminster sold it once again as a workby Rembrandt, an attribution that was maintained for the greater part of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[8] By 1980, however, attribution
questions resurfaced and the painting was sold as by a “follower ofRembrandt, possibly Lievens.”
In 1982, the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) called the painting aneighteenth-century “imitation of Rembrandt’s early style, which was notproduced in his own circle.”[9] In 2005, however, the RRP reassessed thepainting’s attribution and described it as being from the “School ofRembrandt,” proposing that it had “originated in the immediate circle
around Rembrandt, or even more likely, that of Jan Lievens.”[10] Whoever
the artist, an attribution to Rembrandt cannot be supported: in contrast toRembrandt’s strong chiaroscuro and balanced and vibrant composition,
this mirrored adaptation, with the unseen light source bouncing off thevellum pages and the folds of the tablecloth, is more stilted, more sparse,
and more somber, and the figures are not modeled with the forceful threedimensionality so characteristic of Rembrandt.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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The painting has more connections to Jan Lievens’s manner than to that ofGerrit Dou.[11] A close point of reference is A Magus at a Table , ca.
1631–32, by Lievens in Upton House, Warwickshire (fig 2).[12] Both works
include dramatically dark backgrounds that accentuate the otherwise
evenly distributed light’s focus on the figures and the corner of the table,
which has documents dangling over the edge of a heavy, green tablecloth.
The delicate handling and the figural types in the painting also seem toecho Lievens’s manner. Despite the uncertainty regarding the painting’s
authorship, Two Old Men Disputing fits comfortably within the vibrantartistic environment of Leiden in the late 1620s.
-Henriette Rahusen© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peter and St. Paul”)
Page 6 of 11Endnotes
1. The zucchetto or pileolus is a small, round skullcap worn by members of the Roman Catholicclergy. The color red is reserved for the zucchettos of cardinals. (The pope’s skullcap iswhite, and those worn by archbishops and bishops are purple).
2. The suggestion that the two men represent the apostles Peter and Paul was first made by
Christian Tümpel in his discussion of Rembrandt van Rijn’s Two Scholars Disputing, 1628
(National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). Christian Tümpel, “Studien zur Ikonografie derHistorien Rembrandts,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 20 (1969): 182–87. Tümpel,
however, solely focused on the first of the two visits, when Paul stayed at Peter’s house inJerusalem for fifteen days (Galatians 1:18). The dispute at the heart of this painting actually
took place during their second meeting (Galatians 2:11–14).
3. Galatians 2:11–14. Click here for a detailed description of the dispute.
4. For the seventeenth-century debate on tolerance, see Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch
Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 , The Oxford History of Early Modern
Europe (Oxford, 1995), 502–3. Episcopius (1583–1643) was born Simon Bischop, but isknown by the Latinized version of his last name.
5. Click here for the object page of the National Gallery of Victoria.
6. For a discussion of Rembrandt’s Two Scholars Disputing in Melbourne, 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), 159–68, no. A
113, repro. See page 165, repro., for Rembrandt’s Study in Red and Black Chalk (StaatlicheMuseen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin), on which the figure in theforeground of the Leiden Collection painting is based.
The Rembrandt Research Project’s discussion of the Melbourne painting accepts ChristianTümpel’s interpretation that the two men are the apostles Peter and Paul, representing theJews and the Gentiles respectively (pp. 166–67). Neither the Rembrandt Research Projectnor Tümpel, however, connected the historical dispute in Antioch to the theological debate
swirling around the Dutch Republic in the 1620s.
7. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau, 1983), 4:2948,
states that “according to Gerson [this painting is] a Dou-like adaptation of the Melbournepainting.”
8. Rolf Fritz, Sammlung Becker, vol. 1, Gemälde alter Meister (Dortmund, 1967), no. 77,
repro., as Elias and Elisa by Rembrandt, ca. 1629. Fritz reproduced an aquatint of thepainting in reverse, inscribed “Les Docteurs,” by A. Bissel, ca. 1790–1810, as comparative
figure to this painting’s entry. “Les Docteurs” in the caption refers to the role of the Book ofKings prophets Elias (Elijah) and his disciple Elisa (Elisha) as Doctors of the Church. The full
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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inscription on the aquatint reads: “Peint par Rembrandt gravé par A. Bissell. Les Docteurs. –Du Cabinet de Monsieur le Baron de Villiez – à Mannheim chez Dom: Artaria.”
9. 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), 524–28, no.
C513. One year later, Werner Sumowski placed the painting in the “School of Rembrandt”
after the Melbourne painting of 1628. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler,6 vols. (Landau, 1983), 4:2948, no. 1931.
10. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings , vol.
4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering (Dordrecht, 2005), 596, 627–28, no. I C 513 / Br.
424.
11. Ronnie Baer did not include Two Old Men Disputing in her catalogue raisonné of Dou in
1990. See Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675)” (Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1990).
12. Thanks to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. for pointing out the resemblances with this painting byLievens. (Lloyd DeWitt, however, deems the Upton House painting to be “closer toRembrandt or Dou than Lievens.” Personal communication, 27 May 2013). The Upton
House painting is listed as National Trust Inventory Number 446728. According to notesfrom the National Trust, dendrochronology indicates that the oak panel came from a tree
felled after 1660. However, more recent dendrochronological analysis by Ian Tyer indicatesthat insufficient information exists about the wood rings to determine the felling date of thispanel.

Provenance
François Leroy de la Faudignère (d. 1786) (his sale, A. J. Paillet, Paris, 8 January 1787, no.
324, as by School of Rembrandt).
Marquis de Montesquiou (his sale, Paris, Lebrun, 9 December 1788, no. 158, as by Jan
Lievens).
Mr. Lareynière (his sale, Paris, Lebrun, 3 April 1793, no. 99, as by Jan Lievens).
Duke of Westminster, London (his sale, London, Christie’s, 4 July 1924, no. 90, as byRembrandt [to Wills for £2,415]); [Paul Bottenwieser, Berlin, 1924–25].
Dr. Wolfgang Huck, Berlin, 1925; [P. de Boer, Amsterdam, sold between 1953 and 1956, asby Rembrandt].
Dr. H. Becker, Dortmund, by 1967; [Hans M. Cramer, The Hague, by 1980, inv. no. 87, as bya follower of Rembrandt, possibly Jan Lievens].
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Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peter and St. Paul”)
Page 8 of 11[Newhouse Galleries, New York, 1991, as by Rembrandt].
[Bijl-Van Urk B. V., Alkmaar, 2005, as by School of Rembrandt].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

Exhibition History
Berlin, The Academy of Arts, “Gemälde alter Meister aus Berliner Privatbesitz,” July–August
1925, no. 313 [lent by Wolfgang Huck, Berlin].
Delft, Prinsenhof Museum, “Drie Rembrandts in de jaren 1953–1956 verkocht door deKunsthandel P. de Boer Amsterdam,” 10 August–2 September 1956, no. 2 [lent by P. deBoer].
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, December
2009–January 2011 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Dutch Treat,” 11 October 2011–6 January 2012[lent by the present owner].
Leiden, Lakenhal Museum, “Gerrit Dou: The Leiden Collection from New York,” 9 March–31
August 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, “An Eye For Detail: Dutch Painting
from the Leiden Collection,” September 2014–May 2015 [lent by the present owner].

References
Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonnè of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, andFrench Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 7:141–42, no. 417, as by Rembrandt.
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 . 8 vols.
London, 1907–27, 6:196, no. 343, as by Rembrandt. Translated fromBeschreibendes undkritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten Höllandischen Maler desXVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Bode, Wilhelm von. “Ein neuaufgefundenes Jugendwerk Rembrandts.”

Zeitschrift fürbildende Kunst 58, no. 34 (1924–25): 1–4, as by Rembrandt.
Gemälde alter Meister aus Berliner Besitz. Ausstellung in der Akademie der Künste . Exh.
cat. Berlin, The Academy of Arts. Berlin, 1925, 50, no. 313, as by Rembrandt.
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Two Old Men Disputing (“St. Peter and St. Paul”)
Page 9 of 11Bauch, Kurt. Die Kunst des jungen Rembrandt . Heidelberg, 1933, 78, 82, 83, no. 75, 195, n.
36.
Bredius, Abraham. Rembrandt: Gemälde. Vienna, 1935, 18, no. 424, as by Rembrandt.
Bredius, Abraham. The Paintings of Rembrandt. London, 1937, 24, no. 424, as byRembrandt.
Hamann, Richard. Rembrandt. Berlin, 1948, 208, as by Rembrandt.
Drie Rembrandts in de jaren 1953–1956 verkocht door de Kunsthandel P. de BoerAmsterdam. Exh. cat. Delft, Stedelijk Museum het Prinsenhof. Delft, 1956, as by Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Der frühe Rembrandt und sein Zeit: Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutungseines Frühstils. Berlin, 1960, 143–48, no. 111a, no. 112, 259, n. 106–7, as by Rembrandt.
Bauch, Kurt. Rembrandt: Gemälde. Berlin, 1966, no. 6, as by Rembrandt.
Laus, Jan. Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Katalog Alte Meister bis 1800 . Karlsruhe, 1966,247, no. 1789, as by Rembrandt.
Fritz, Rolf. Gemälde Alter Meister. Dortmund, 1967, no. 77, as “Elias und Elisa” byRembrandt.
Bredius, Abraham. Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings . With revisions andnotes by Horst Gerson. London, 1969, 340, 587, no. 424, as “Elias und Elisa” byRembrandt.
Hamann, Richard. Rembrandt. Edited by Werner Sumowski. Berlin, 1969, 208, 446, n. 4, asa copy after Rembrandt.
Sumowski, Werner. “Kritische Bemerkungen zur neuesten Gemäldekritik.” InNeue Beiträge
zur Rembrandt-Forschung. Edited by Otto von Simson and Jan Kelch. Berlin, 1973, 95, asby Rembrandt.
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, 1982,524–28, no. C 13, as an eighteenth-century Rembrandt imitation.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau, 1983–95, 4:2948,2998, no. 1931, as by School of Rembrandt, possibly Willem de Poorter.
Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings . Vol.
4, Self-Portraits. Edited by Ernst van de Wetering. Dordrecht, 2005, 627–28, no. C 13, ascircle of Rembrandt or Jan Lievens.

VersionsEngraved© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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1. Pietro Monaco (1707–72), after Rembrandt, Eliseo che predise I Regi attentati contro sestesso, ca. 1730–39, engraving, 505 x 363 mm, British Museum, London.

Versions and Copies
1. After Rembrandt, probably contemporary, Two Scholars Disputing, oil on panel, 39.5 x 33
cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, inv. no. 1798.

2. After Rembrandt, probably contemporary, Two Scholars Disputing, current whereabouts
unknown, formerly in the Lahmann Collection, Weisser Hirsch, Dresden.

Versions Notes

Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a single plank with a vertical grain. The plank is oak, from theBaltic region, with a fell date of 1601 and an earliest probable use date of 1609.[1] The panel has
been thinned and adhered to a supplemental wooden support, which is comprised of fourvertically grained boards. Thin wooden shims have been attached to the left and right edges withtongue and groove joins. There is evidence that a cradle was once attached to the reverse of thesupplemental support. Fifteen dark rectangles, indicating the areas of the wood that were notcovered by the cradle members, are visible on the reverse of the panel.
The panel was prepared with a light-colored ground that is visible where it stops at the edges ofthe wood. It was thinly and evenly applied. The paint was built up in successive layers. The Xradiograph shows an earlier composition with a standing figure and a seated figure in larger
format than the current composition. It is unclear if this indicates an earlier composition
altogether, or just artist’s changes to the current composition. The head of the seated man in theearlier composition is slightly higher and to the right of the head of the seated man in the currentcomposition. There is low impasto along the contours of the earlier figures. In raking light, thecontours of another larger standing man are visible between the open book and the man facing
the viewer.
Infrared photography[2] reveals several slight artist’s changes: the shape of the upper portion of
the figure’s head facing the viewer appears to have been enlarged twice, the same figure’s
proper left hand has been shifted further toward the back of the book, the beard of the figure
seen in profile has been made thinner, and the length of the two pages dangling over the tableedge have been shortened and moved to the right.
The painting is in very good condition. There are three previously restored vertical splits along© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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the top and bottom edges of the panel. These were probably created by the cradle, as it would
have restricted the panel’s movement. The panel exhibits vertical planar distortion along thesesplits, creating a washboard effect.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Peter Klein, dendrochronological report, 14 January 2007; Ian Tyers, dendrochronologicalreport, September 2008.
2. Infrared photographs were taken at 780nm, 850nm, and 1000nm.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection