Two portraits by Rembrandt: pendants or not?
Now on show at the Danish museum The Nivaagaard Collection: the focus exhibition Rembrandt Reunited. This exhibition reunites two Rembrandts for the first time in 223 years as the result of an ambitious research project in collaboration with the RKD. The key question of this research was: were the two portraits of a man and a woman originally painted as a pair by Rembrandt?
Do they belong together?
For decades, Rembrandt scholars have speculated whether Portrait of a 39-year-old woman, in The Nivaagaard Collection, and Portrait of a 40-year-old man, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are in fact pendants. Both are painted on oak panels in 1632, they are oval in shape, about the same size and feature almost identical inscriptions to the right and left of the sitters. Furthermore, they were both part of the same private collection before being put up for sale in Paris in 1801. A study of the two portraits was conducted last year by RKD-curator Dr Angela Jager, and technical specialist Prof em Dr Jørgen Wadum.
2. Rembrandt, Portrait of a 39-year-old woman, 1632, The Nivaagaard Collection, foto David Kahr
Rembrandt scanned
Both paintings were researched both art-historically and technically. By means of dendrochronological research, the provenance and dating of the planks was determined from the year rings in the oak panels. A later addition around the portrait of the woman covered all the edges of the original panel, making it impossible to see the annual rings with the naked eye. To still conduct dendrochronological research, a CT scan was made of the painting – the first Rembrandt ever. This revealed that the youngest planks in the panels come from trees felled after 1616 and 1625, noting that a plank in the woman's portrait comes from the same forest as one of the planks in the man's panel.
Addition to the woman's portrait
The pigments of the paintings have been examined through advanced X-ray fluorescence analysis. The analysis makes it possible to compare Rembrandt's painting technique in the two works. Combined with multispectral imaging, a reconstruction could be made of the original composition of the portrait of the woman, before the hand with prayer book was added. The technical study was combined with the art historical research. By studying the silver locks on the prayer book, it could be established that it was not painted in 1632, but in the second half of the seventeenth century. Extensive provenance studies have been carried out and a multitude of archives and databases have been carefully scrutinised to search for an identification of the two sitters.
Experts meet at the two portraits
At a special expert meeting on 2 September, researchers and art historians from different countries gathered to examina the two portraits side by side for the first time and discuss the results of the research. The meeting brought together specialists from Danish, German, British and Italian museums, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the RKD and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. The aim: to investigate whether the two portraits were originally intended as pendants.
The riddle of identifying the man and the woman is still open. An archival record of two portraits by Rembrandt of a 39-year-old woman and 40-year-old man in 1632 argues for their pendency. ‘The man's aetatis, while not applied by Rembrandt, is contemporary’, Dorothy Mahon said. The research has provided the necessary technical data. It is now known which color pigments were used in the two portraits and that they are largely identical, just as the wood in the painting is from the same area in Lithuania. The quality of the portraits seems to differ slightly. Petria Noble see about that ‘this is largely due to the worn condition of parts in the painting from Nivaagaard, making it difficult to compare the technique’. The alterations in the portrait of a woman were debated: what was still altered by Rembrandt, and what by the painter who added the hand?
New knowledge leads to new questions
The lively exchange of ideas eventually led to the conclusion that more research is needed – not only on these two portraits, but perhaps on the entire oeuvre of Rembrandt's portraits from this period. But the researchers agree that the new technology and the bringing together of the two paintings after 223 years have created new knowledge about how Rembrandt painted portraits in his young years – and a new basis for future research into pendants. The mystery surrounding the 39-year-old woman and the 40-year-old man in the portraits remains for now.
Rembrandt Reunited at The Nivaagaard Collection will be on view from 3 September to 10 November 2024. The research on Portrait of a 39-year-old woman is part of The Nivaagaard Collection's research project focused on the collection of Dutch Baroque art led by Angela Jager in collaboration with Jørgen Wadum. The catalogue with the results of their research will be published this autumn.
RKD curator Dr Angela Jager talks about her provenance research on Rembrandt's Portrait of a 39-year-old woman in the following videos:
The case study Rembrandt’s Portrait of a 39-year-old Woman
Discovery through the use of visual search in the case of Rembrandt's Portrait of a 39-year-old woman
Two portraits by Rembrandt: pendants or not?