Overview
- Rembrandt specialist Gary Schwartz now argues the canvas version of Old Man with a Gold Chain, long labeled a workshop copy, was painted by Rembrandt himself as an autograph replica.
- Art Institute of Chicago research found the canvas used Rembrandt’s studio pigments and matches the panel’s silhouette and tiny details, but x-rays show reworking only on the panel, which the museum reads as evidence the panel came first.
- Conservators point to telling paint-handling differences, noting the panel’s eyelashes were scratched from a dark layer and its earring shines in three bold strokes, while the canvas shows painted lashes and many smaller strokes for the earring’s glint.
- Both paintings hang side by side in Chicago for study, and the museum’s wall text presents one as a Rembrandt and the other as a workshop copy, with the canvas set to travel to Kassel next for further comparison without a revised label.
- The canvas has been in the Newman family since 1898 and was downgraded after Wilhelm Bode favored the Chicago panel; a 2024 review at Cambridge did not change that view, even as recent reattributions like the Rijksmuseum’s Vision of Zacharias show how Rembrandt attributions keep shifting.