“The Raising of Jesus on the Cross” is truly a Rembrandt. For a century it was considered “a crude imitation”

The first to anticipate the news was the Washington Post. Now it seems that there is certainty. For a century The raising of Jesus on the cross was considered a “crude imitation” of a Rembrandt (1606-1669), the work of a follower of the Dutch master, but today a group of Dutch experts, led by the baroque art historian Jeroen Giltaij, has issued a new verdict : «The painting is authentic».

The oil sketch of 1640 has long been considered the work of an assistant in the workshop of the great painter author of The night watch.

Now the Bredius Museum in The Hague, where the sketch has been kept since it was bought in 1921, has revealed, thanks to new scientific techniques that it was instead painted by Rembrandt. So from the warehouse where it had been kept until now, the painting will be exhibited in the gallery open to the public.

“The quality of the details is so well done that I am convinced it is a Rembrandt,” said Johanneke Verhave, who restored the sketch. Verhave studied the work with Jeroen Giltaij, former chief curator of ancient paintings at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, who first “rediscovered” it while researching a book on Rembrandt.

The artwork was first purchased by the museum’s original curator, Abraham Bredius, in 1921. He too was convinced that the sketch was an original Rembrandt, but over the years art experts had liquidated it. as a “crude imitation”.

“Now I really think this is a Rembrandt,” said Giltaij. One of the main arguments why the sketch was considered an imitation was the apparent lack of detail in the brushstrokes. Giltaij, however, believes that the sketch can be traced back to Rembrandt’s 1633 painting entitled The raising of the cross, kept in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Restorer Johanneke Verhave explained that infrared reflectography and X-ray scans revealed “interesting elements” about the sketch.

“Scientific examinations showed that the sketch had several changes made by the artist himself during the painting, which means that its composition was a creative process,” he said. “This means that the painter was changing his mind while he was working. So he clearly wasn’t copying another painting. ‘ The research results was sent to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which conducted an independent analysis. “Regarding the use of the materials, however, researchers at the Rijksmuseum have found nothing that contradicts an attribution to Rembrandt,” the Bredius Museum in The Hague said in a statement.