Portrait of a Man Seated

This man was painted with a partner in mind. Around 1632, the year after Rembrandt settled in Amsterdam, he made this panel together with a matching portrait of a woman, and the two still hang side by side in Vienna. Seated and half turned, the man opens his hand toward the right, where she sits in the companion picture, and her pose answers his. The museum notes that both were painted on walnut, with the same materials and the same technique. Who the two sitters were is not recorded. The pair has also divided scholars. The Rembrandt Research Project, a Dutch team that spent decades testing his attributions, found the woman's pose too stiff for Rembrandt himself and proposed his pupil Ferdinand Bol, even though Bol only joined the studio after 1635. The museum still lists the man as Rembrandt's own work, and both panels are already recorded in the Habsburg picture gallery by 1783.