Portrait of Rembrandt (1606-1669) with a Gorget

The young man here is Rembrandt at 23, still in Leiden, wearing a gorget, the steel collar of a suit of armour, over a dark coat. For more than two centuries collectors took this panel for his own self-portrait. Govert van Slingelandt owned it in The Hague, Prince William V bought his entire collection in 1768, and in 1795 the French carried it to Paris with the prince's other paintings, and it came back only in 1815. Then in 1998 infrared images revealed an extensive underdrawing beneath the paint, something never seen before in his work. It followed the outlines of a near-identical self-portrait in Nuremberg, long dismissed as a copy. The roles were reversed. The Mauritshuis now catalogues this panel as a studio copy by one of his pupils after the Nuremberg original, and new research in 2025 confirmed it.