The paintings collection comprises works made in Europe from roughly 1300 to 1900, with the majority dating from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. The works in the second list are the subjects of further research to clarify as much provenance as possible within the limits imposed by the fragmentary information available to us. Attribution Attribution is the assignment of a work of art to a particular artist, school, or nationality.
Attributions often change over time.
In tracing the ownership of a work of art, it can be important to know its attribution history, since it may have been identified differently in the past. The list of prior attributions provides both the former and current attributions of paintings in the collection with gaps in their provenance. Changes in the attribution of a work of art occur for several reasons. Often paintings and other types of objects are neither signed nor dated, or have had false signatures added to them after their creation. Even with well-known artists, attribution can be highly subjective, and experts often disagree and change their minds.