Old drawings, new names: Rembrandt and his contemporaries

Abstract

The attribution of a work of art is a fascinating aspect of art-historical study. How do you recognize a 'genuine Rembrandt' and what distinguishes his work from that of his pupils and contemporaries? This exhibition of sixty drawings at the Rembrandt House Museum focuses solely on the criteria that a prominent art historian employs when making an attribution. The works include drawings by Rembrandt and by his pupils and contemporaries. What all these works have in common is that they have been attributed to seventeenth-century artists by Peter Schatborn. For more than thirty years he worked in Rijksmuseum's department of prints and drawings, initially as a member of staff and later as its head. Over the course of his career he became one of the world's leading specialists in Rembrandt's drawings. The exhibition addresses the problem of attributing seventeenth-century Netherlandish drawings.