书念妇人的离去

For most of its life this small panel was called something else. From the 18th century onward it was known as Abraham sending away Hagar and her son, until in 1966 scholars reread it as a scene from the Book of Kings, the wealthy woman of Shunem setting out on a donkey to find the prophet Elisha after her child has died. The authorship is unsettled too. It was long sold as a Rembrandt, but the Rembrandt Research Project places it in his Amsterdam workshop around 1640 and points to his pupil Ferdinand Bol as the likely hand. What is not in doubt is the moment it holds, the pause of a departure, a household figure kept back on the threshold while the traveller sets off. It reached the museum in 1901 from a private collector.