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... with a high-resolution scan of the work itself available for download, to boot. I really appreciate whenever museums go out of their way to share those publically! Much better than many paintings only officially available as some 400px thumbnail.
It’s a cool story.

As a [former] artist, myself, the thing that comes to mind, is the model must have been in real discomfort, after about 3 minutes.

I'm currently reading Heretics by the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura. The plot centers around a Rembrandt stolen from a Jewish family that tried to flee to Cuba in the 1930s and a big part of the story follows a young Jewish artist that takes up a kind of apprenticeship with Rembrandt. Padura seems to like stories that span many decades and even centuries as in this book.

Anyway, the book does a good job of describing Rembrandt's life even if the story is mostly fiction.

The Rijksmuseum is amazing, reserve a day on your next visit to Amsterdam and take it all in!

I also like their tech stack, they let you use your own phone + headphones for the guided tours.

You need more than one day, more than one visit, for even much smaller art collections.

Trying to take all that in in such a short time is just a recipe for visual, emotional, and intellectual indigestion.

"What's this painting here behind the couch? Did any of you guys put this here? Hey, wait, what...... this is a Rembrandt!"
Re-attributed, to be more accurate.

The painting wasn't exactly unknown: its existence was reasonably well-documented and it was included in a variety of Rembrandt catalogues. However, in 1960 it was decided that it wasn't a Rembrandt, so people mostly stopped caring about it.

This discovery is a re-analysis of the painting using modern methods, which revealed that the 1960 "not a Rembrandt" decision was a bit premature.

Unrelated, but I have never before seen that "ij" ligature in the title.
That's a pretty amazing painting, I like how they attached a high quality jpg of it. Rembrandt is my favourite for sure.