Christ and the Woman of Samaria

For most of the last century this panel was simply a Rembrandt. The great catalogues of his work said so one after another, from Hofstede de Groot's around 1900 onward. Then the verdicts began to drift. Later compilers moved it to the circle of Rembrandt, and then to his workshop. The Rembrandt Research Project, the Dutch team that spent decades sorting the real Rembrandts from the rest, called it Rembrandt and a pupil. The Metropolitan's own catalogue of 2007 settled on Style of Rembrandt, which is what the label says today. That muddle is ordinary for Amsterdam in the 1650s, when his pupils painted in his manner and he went over their work himself. The subject comes from John's gospel, Christ resting at Jacob's well and asking a Samaritan woman for a drink. It is painted on a wood panel just over 60 centimetres high, and the Met dates it no more precisely than around 1655.