Rembrandt Began a Biblical Painting. Another Artist Finished It 'Rather Crudely.' Now, Restorations Have Revealed the Long-Lost Original
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He’s hiding in The Night Watch, his right eye peeking out from behind a group of civic guardsmen.
In Descent From the Cross, the same man stands on a ladder and helps lower Jesus’s body. He also appears in Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, clinging to his cap and gazing out at the viewer as the disciples weather a violent storm. This supporting character is likely Rembrandt van Rijn, the artist himself.
The 17th-century Dutch painter sometimes inserted himself into biblical or historical scenes. Because of these cameos, along with his many self-portraits, art historians have a clear sense of what Rembrandt looked like. In 2014, art dealer Jan Six was flipping through a German auction house catalog when he noticed a painting with this familiar figure positioned in the background, looking straight ahead.
Titled Let the Little Children Come Unto Me, it was billed as a mid-17th-century artwork from the Netherlandish school—but Rembrandt wasn’t listed as the artist. “I thought, ‘Hang on, he’s such a young man, around 20. Who would paint Rembrandt in a picture then?’” Six told Artnet’s Henri Neuendorf in 2018.
“Rembrandt wasn’t famous at that moment, so the only person who could have done that is himself.” Six purchased the painting for around $1.7 million, and experts ultimately confirmed that it was, indeed, a long-lost Rembrandt. Since then, conservators have been working on a meticulous restoration, removing layers of overpaint added by another artist. On July 1, the scene will go under the hammer at a Sotheby’s auction, where it’s expected to fetch between roughly $10.6 million and $15.9 million.
Rembrandt likely started the painting in 1627, when he was still living in Leiden, the Dutch city where he was born. But he never finished the piece, leaving it behind when he moved to Amsterdam in the 1630s. According to the lot listing, another artist completed it “rather crudely” at a later date.
Opportunities for young artists were limited in Leiden. Rembrandt relocated to Amsterdam, a vibrant hub for renowned Dutch painters, at age 25 to make a name for himself. The painting’s provenance is unclear, though experts say its first owner could have been Floris Soop, an Amsterdam collector.
In 1657, Soop’s records describe “a large painting depicting Christ calling the small children to him.” This piece may have passed to a relative, who owned a “large chimney piece done by Rembrandt,” according to a 1661 inventory. Records suggest that the man sold two large paintings by Rembrandt at auction two years later. “There is certainly no proof that the present picture is the one listed in these three inventories, by Rembrandt and of this subject,” the lot listing notes.
“But it remains plausible, all the more so because no other painting by Rembrandt of this subject, large or small, is known.”
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