Lot 1076 | Bust of a Bearded Man

REMBRANDT VAN RIJN
1606 Leiden - 1669 Amsterdam


Circle
Title: Bust of a Bearded Man.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 19 x 17cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Verso:
On the plate remains of an old collection seal and striking mark.

Cf. Literature:
E.v.d. Wetering: Rembrandts Paintings Revisited. Dordrecht 2017, p. 58, ill. 16.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

The painting was examined in September 2020 in the Laboratory for Art Technological Investigations of the Technical University of Cologne by means of an X-ray fluorescence analysis. In addition to the pigments commonly used from the 17th century onwards, the use of zinc, chromium and cadmium in small quantities is noticeable, which at least suggests restorations after about 1840 and therefore provides no information about the time of origin of the painting.

A very comparable head study is also listed in the database of the RKD, The Hague, under ill. no. 232219. This panel, which is attributed to a successor of Rembrandt, is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum. A total of at least seven versions of this tronie are now known, one of which was auctioned at VAN HAM in 2018.

The depiction of this character head of a bearded man is known as the tronie from Rembrandt's workshop and may have served both as a study head for students and as a model for paintings. For example, the Budapest Museum has a panel attributed to Rembrandt and his pupil Gerrit Dou with the parable of the Treasure in the Field, in which the sitter's physiognomy is based on this head.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer, Amsterdam, and David de Witt of the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam for their kind support in cataloguing the present painting.