Article: Rembrandt
Section: Expert assessments

Question: List three reasons why Rembrandt's works are difficult to definitively identify.

In 1968 the Rembrandt Research Project began under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research; it was initially expected to last a highly optimistic ten years.
Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonné of his paintings.
As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been removed from their list, although others have been added back.
Many of those removed are now thought to be the work of his students.
One example of activity is "The Polish Rider", in New York's Frick Collection.
Rembrandt's authorship had been questioned by at least one scholar, Alfred von Wurzbach, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but for many decades later most scholars, including the foremost authority writing in English, Julius S. Held, agreed that it was indeed by the master.
In the 1980s, however, Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, cautiously and tentatively attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about whom little is known.
But Bruyn's remained a minority opinion, the suggestion of Drost's authorship is now generally rejected, and the Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of".
More recent opinion has shifted even more decisively in favor of the Frick, with Simon Schama in his 1999 book "Rembrandt's Eyes", and a Rembrandt Project scholar, Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master.
Those few scholars who still question Rembrandt's authorship feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work.
A similar issue was raised by Simon Schama in his book "Rembrandt's Eye" concerning the verification of titles associated with the subject matter depicted in Rembrandt's works.
For example, the exact subject being portrayed in "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer" (recently retitled by curators at the Metropolitan Museum) has been directly challenged by Schama applying the scholarship of Paul Crenshaw.
Schama presents a substantial argument that it was the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles who is depicted in contemplation by Rembrandt and not Aristotle.
Another painting, "Pilate Washing His Hands", is also of questionable attribution.
Critical opinion of this picture has varied since 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as "a somewhat abnormal work" by Rembrandt.
Scholars have since dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil, possibly Aert de Gelder.
The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master's command of illumination and modeling.
The attribution and re-attribution work is ongoing.
In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt's students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: "Study of an Old Man in Profile" and "Study of an Old Man with a Beard" from a US private collection, "Study of a Weeping Woman", owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and "Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet", painted in 1640.
Rembrandt's own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, since, like many masters before him, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them as authorized copies.
Additionally, his style proved easy enough for his most talented students to emulate.
Further complicating matters is the uneven quality of some of Rembrandt's own work, and his frequent stylistic evolutions and experiments.
As well, there were later imitations of his work, and restorations which so seriously damaged the original works that they are no longer recognizable.
It is highly likely that there will never be universal agreement as to what does and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.