_Unknown_ (Dutch: School of Rembrandt).
This is one of the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. It was bought
in 1866 as a Rembrandt and at a Rembrandt price (£7000), but was soon
recognised as being only a work by some pupil. It is easy to be wise
after the event, but it certainly seems strange that the connoisseurs
of the time, even if technical differences had escaped them, should
not have seen a lack of Rembrandt's power about this work. A writer in
the _Times_ (June 24, 1888) has no hesitation in ascribing the picture
to Nicolas Maes. He says: "If it was painted by Maes it would probably
have been after the series of small works, mostly dating about 1656.
Maes was a pupil of Rembrandt in 1650, at the time when the master's
treatment of sacred subjects was more direct than in his earlier years.
In this picture fanciful costume is discarded, and the figures are
painted straight from the life. The figure of Christ is, indeed, weak
and conventional, but it is not to be expected that a young man would
here be successful in a figure so foreign to his general practice;
and, if we admit the supposition that the composition followed the
small panels, the relaxation of style pervading the entire work tallies
with the known facts of the career of Maes, who between 1660 and 1670
appears to have devoted himself almost entirely to portrait painting;
these representations of Dutch and Antwerp burghers, though solid and
respectable, possess none of the charm and interest of the earlier
works owing their inspiration to the direct influence of Rembrandt."
(See, for instance, No. 1277.) Some ascribe the picture with equal
assurance to Lievens (see 1095); see an article by Ford Madox Brown
in the _Magazine of Art_, Feb. 1890; others to Eeckhout (see _The
Athenæum_, Jan. 19, 1907).