The Vanishing Rembrandts - ACE249.4

A Committee member counting threads in a x-ray of a canvas to help place and date it; commentary says that dendrochronology can date a piece of wooden panel. London’s National Gallery. Chemical analysis allows for dating of pigments. Paint layers can be discerned by x-ray and other techniques. Portrait of Saskia as Flora (1635). X-ray shows another head in lower layers of paint; painting now thought to have been originally of Judith and Holofernes. Van de Wetering talking about how x-ray and similar techniques can help observation. Ingamells on how scientific techniques can help clarify but no more. The "self portrait" pastiche: Ingamells says that dendrochronology confirms its wooden panel as being from Amsterdam, 1634. Commentary says that panel for Wallace Collection Landscape with a Coach (c.1637), rejected by Committee, comes from same tree as an approved Rembrandt in Paris. "Science points in one direction and connoisseurship in another." Eaton Hall, Cheshire; details of Woman with a Fan and Man with a Hawk (1643), once believed to be Rembrandts, have been rejected by the Committee. Duke of Westminster says he doesn’t really mind if the paintings are or are not by Rembrandt; he’s only interested in the quality of the work which hasn’t changed even though the attribution has. Bruyn explains why the Committee’s ideas have changed since they did authenticate these paintings in 1985: as they learn more, their ideas develop. Brown gives reasons why he believes the paintings are by Rembrandt; he compares them with the Self Portrait (1640) and the Portrait of Agatha Bas, Wife of Nicolas van Bambeeck (1641). Van de Wetering, Brown and Bruyn all give their opinions, comparing the two sets of portraits, and talk generally about the authentication process.