Portrait of a Woman with Millstone Collar

On the back of this oak panel is a seal of the Musée Napoléon, as the Louvre was called under the empire. In 1807, with the duchy of Brunswick under French occupation, much of the ducal picture collection was taken to Paris, and this portrait stayed there until 1815. Before that it had been at Salzdahlum, the palace of Duke Anton Ulrich, since at least 1710.

For most of its life nobody questioned the signature on the right, Rembrandt, 1633. In 1969 the art historian Horst Gerson proposed a pupil instead. The Rembrandt Research Project, a team formed to separate his own paintings from his studio's, agreed in 1986 and classed it as studio work, then gave it back to Rembrandt in its final volume almost 30 years later. Tree-ring study showed that the middle plank of the panel came from the same tree as a board used for a portrait of a man in a beret and steel gorget, now in Chicago.