Stories

A rediscovered Rembrandt

An oil sketch in the Museum Bredius collection in The Hague showing the Raising of the Cross, was recently revealed to be a Rembrandt painting. The new attribution to Rembrandt was made by Dr Jeroen Giltaij, formerly chief curator of old master paintings and sculpture at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Giltaij published his discovery in a new volume discussing every painting ever ascribed to the Dutch master – Het Grote Rembrandt Boek: Alle 684 schilderijen. Abraham Bredius had acquired the Raising of the Cross in 1921 for his collection as a work by Rembrandt.

Read: how this new attribution came about.

The restoration of Jan Steen

Abraham Bredius never saw Jan Steen’s Wedding Night of Tobias and Sarah the way it now appears on display in the museum.

While Bredius had acquired the right half, the left half was on show in Utrecht’s Central Museum. In 1996, restoration experts Wietse van Noort and Jan Venema cleaned and restored the two halves, and then reunited them.

Read: the restoration report revealing how the two halves were reassembled.