Portrait of a Man ("The Auctioneer")

Look at the sheaf of papers in the man's hands. A signature and a date are painted on it, Rembrandt, 1658. That was the year Rembrandt's own belongings were sold off in Amsterdam to pay his creditors, and in the 1870s a Dutch critic decided the sitter had to be Thomas Jacobsz Haeringh, the man who handled that sale. The picture has been called The Auctioneer ever since. The Met points out that the identification rested on an etching of the wrong Haaring, the son rather than the father who actually ran the auction. The signature fared no better. Autoradiographs made in 1982 showed handling that does not match Rembrandt's work of the 1650s, and the museum now credits a follower nobody has managed to name. The canvas had sold in Amsterdam in 1798 for 450 guilders. In 1909, while it was still a Rembrandt, Benjamin Altman paid 262,980 dollars for it.