Study of an old man (Rembrandt's father)

In 1892 Abraham Bredius, director of the Mauritshuis and a leading Rembrandt scholar, bought this panel for his own collection, a year after the Swedish artist Anders Zorn had owned it. Bredius believed the old man in the dark cap and fur-trimmed coat was the master's father, Harmen, a Leiden miller who died in 1630. The museum now doubts that name, and the hand as well, and lists the work as Rembrandt with a question mark. Some evidence points to Leiden around 1630. The wood comes from the same tree as the panels of Simeon in the Temple, now in Hamburg, and Minerva, now in Berlin. In research the museum published in 2025, an X-ray showed the painter changing course while working, which a copyist would not do. One specialist has argued that the flat fur trim looks like an assistant's work.