A rediscovered Rembrandt painting has fetched £10.9m GBP ($13.7m USD) when it hit Sotheby’s auction in London on December 6. Entitled The Adoration of The Kings (1628), the artwork first emerged in the 1950s but disappeared from public knowledge until 2021, when it sold via Christie’s in Amsterdam. The sale two years ago was initially attributed as a work created by the students of the artist, sometimes referred to as the “Circle of Rembrandt”, resulting in a pre-auction valuation of around $10,000 to $15,000 USD.
The largely monochromatic painting depicts the biblical account of The Three Wise Men as they encounter baby Jesus. While small in scale, just about 9.6 x 7.2 inches, the work is “particularly significant”, according to a Sotheby’s spokesman in an interview with CNN, noting that it adds to our understanding of the Dutch master at a crucial stage in his development, where he was “clearly very ambitious and developing very quickly as an artist.”
Sotheby’s maintains its claim that the work is an original Rembrandt through a lengthy report and an eight month investigation filled with x-ray imaging from leading scholars. “An artist who is as famous for his production of etchings and drawings in monochrome as for his paintings in colour,” wrote Sotheby’s, “created this painting without any color but with tone, a stunning achievement and a testament to his ambition as well as to his genius with the brush.”
The Adoration of The Kings (1628) was first mentioned in a 1714 inventory from a collector in Amsterdam and then sold several times over a hundred years later. The painting reemerged in 1955 through the catalog of German collector, J.C.H. Heldring, whose heir had sold the work just before she passed away to Christie’s after a 70-year hiatus.
