An early Rembrandt painting has been discovered after two years of study and the latest scanning techniques revealed that a little-known 1633 work is by the greatest Dutch master.
Researchers at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam used the technology and new knowledge of Rembrandt’s craft and technique to discover that Vision of Zacharias in the Temple, once rejected as his work, now stands alongside some of his most renowned paintings.
The work, part of a series exploring his fascination with Biblical scenes, will go on long-term display at the Dutch national museum on Wednesday.
“It’s wonderful that people can now learn more about the young Rembrandt — he created this very poignant work shortly after moving from Leiden to Amsterdam,” said Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s director, who manages the largest collection of Rembrandts in the world. “It is a beautiful example of the unique way Rembrandt depicts stories.”
The painting’s value is impossible to estimate but would be in the tens of millions if ever sold. A black chalk drawing, Young Lion Resting (1638-42) by Rembrandt sold for $17.8 million at auction in New York earlier this month.
Jonathan Bikker and Petria Noble, the two museum curators who made the discovery, have compared the painting to Rembrandt’s Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (1630), one of his early masterpieces, which hangs in the museum.
“Like the Jeremiah and other pictures from early in his career, the Vision of Zacharias is an example of Rembrandt’s fascination with God speaking through dreams and visions and the effect it has on humans,” they wrote in The Burlington Magazine on Monday, announcing a painting that “takes its place as a significant and dramatic work from the artist’s early years”.
A detail from the painting
KELLY SCHENK/RIJKSMUSEUM
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 to 1669) is considered the greatest of the Dutch masters, with a body of work that includes national symbols for the Netherlands from the country’s “golden age” in art, civic values and trade.
In 1960 art curators rejected attribution of the painting to Rembrandt and it disappeared into a private collection until recently. The painting’s owner wishes to remain anonymous.
“Unaware of the picture’s whereabouts, no experts had been able to study it since that time. Recently, however, the current owner contacted the Rijksmuseum, allowing the painting to be examined for the first time in 65 years,” said the museum.
• From Vermeer to Raphael, can AI solve art’s most enduring mysteries?
TheVision depicts a scene from the New Testament story when the priest Zacharias is visited in Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem by the Archangel Gabriel. The angel tells him that, despite his and his wife’s advanced age, they will have a son, who will be John the Baptist.
The angel is not shown in the painting but a light shining from the upper right corner heralds his arrival and the priest’s expression reflects his dawning amazement at a visitation that was to strike him dumb because of his doubt of Gabriel’s message.
New insights from the Rijkmuseum’s major restoration and forensic analysis of Rembrandt’s Night Watch (1642) show the painting technique and the build-up of paint layers are comparable to other early works by him.
New x-ray imaging and mapping scans revealed the artist’s compositional changes as he painted supporting its authenticity, as well as his signature and the age of the wooden panel he used for the work.