A work by Rembrandt has been discovered in the archives of a Hague museum after previously being dismissed as an imitator’s copy of another painting by the Dutch old master.
The discovery that the oil sketch Raising Jesus on the Cross was a genuine painting by Rembrandt van Rijn was made by Jeroen Giltaij, an expert art curator.
While researching a book on the works of the 17th century master painter, Giltaij came across the wooden panel hidden away in the storage of the Museum Bredius in the Hague. “When I saw the work, I actually had no doubts. I had a strong premonition that this was a real Rembrandt,” he said
The panel was previously thought to be a copy of a similar painting by Rembrandt called the Raising of the Cross (c1633), which hangs in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek museum.
It was bought more than a century ago by an art historian, Abraham Bredius, whose collection now forms the basis for the Hague museum.