Tête de garçon

For a few years in the late 1620s, two young painters shared a workshop in Leiden and often the same models. One was Jan Lievens. The other was Rembrandt, barely in his twenties. Their head studies from those years look so alike that collectors have argued over them ever since. This small oak panel of a curly-haired boy is one of the disputed pieces. Someone later cut an inscription into the lower right claiming Lievens painted it and Rembrandt retouched it, a note the Rijksmuseum now reads as false. It catalogues the picture simply as the work of a follower of Lievens. The panel is small, about the size of a sheet of paper, the kind of quick head study that sold well in Leiden and that both men turned out by the dozen.