The Vision of Daniel

Daniel is on the ground, knocked flat by the vision he describes in the eighth chapter of his book, the angel standing over him. Who painted this has been argued about for a century. It passed as Rembrandt's own work until scholars began to hear a pupil's hand in it, and in 1984 Josua Bruyn gave it instead to Willem Drost, one of the sharpest young painters in the workshop around 1650, who died in Venice before he was 30. Berlin has gone on showing it under Rembrandt's name. There is a further complication in what a visitor actually sees. The canvas spent the 18th century in England in the hands of Sir Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy, and Reynolds worked over the surface himself.