Anbetung der Könige

This small scene of the Magi kneeling before the Christ child is painted in browns and greys alone, the technique called grisaille that artists used when preparing a design to be turned into a print. It dates to the early 1630s, when the young Rembrandt was working out how to stage a crowd around a single fall of light. The picture also has a tangled history. A version of the composition, long known only through copies, resurfaced in Rome in 2016 after falling off a wall, and was declared the lost original, which has kept scholars arguing over the standing of each surviving canvas. What is not in dispute is the handling of light, which gathers on the Holy Family in front and lets the kings and onlookers behind them sink away into shadow.