Une femme en pleurs

This is a small, unfinished-looking head of a woman in tears, and for a long time nobody was sure Rembrandt had painted it. It matches, almost exactly, the kneeling woman being dragged before Christ in his larger picture The Woman Taken in Adultery, now in London, so it was long read as a workshop study, perhaps by one of his gifted pupils like Carel Fabritius or Nicolaes Maes. Then in 2005 a group of these overlooked panels, this one among them, were re-examined and given back to Rembrandt's own hand. What convinced scholars was partly the sheer economy of it, the way a few loaded strokes build a face crumpling into grief. It is painted on a little oak panel, the kind of quick study a busy master would knock out and set aside.