The youngest painting by Rembrandt goes back to Holland for a while

The youngest painting by Rembrandt van Rijn returned to Holland for a while. The job Bust of a bearded old man From 1633 yesterday unloaded in the Hermitage, Amsterdam.

This masterpiece, along with 34 other works from Dutch lands, make up the exhibition Rembrandt and His Contemporaries, Historical Paintings from the Leiden Collection. The works are in the possession of New York collector Thomas S. Kaplan. Together with his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, he founded the Leiden Collection in 2003 – named after Rembrandt’s hometown – which includes some 250 paintings and drawings.

The 35 panels are masterpieces of history painting, a genre that enjoyed great prestige in the seventeenth century. The art was to depict stories from the Bible and classical antiquity, among other things. Rembrandt is said to have considered history painting essential to the development of a painter’s mastery.

Apart from Rembrandt (1606-1669), the works of, among others, his teacher Peter Lastmann (1583-1633) and his pupils Ferdinand Böll (1616-1680) and Arendt de Gelder (1645-1727) are included in the collection.

The exhibition can be viewed from Saturday 4 February to Sunday 27 August at the Hermitage in Amsterdam.