Rembrandat is the most famous of the seventeenth-century Dutch painterrs.
However, there are doubts whether some paintings attributed to Rembrandt were
actuallt painted by him. One such painting is known as attributed to Rembrandt
because of its style, and indeed the representation of the woman's face is very
much like that of protraits known to be by Rembrandt. BUt there are problems with
the painting that suggest it could not be a work by Rembrandt.
First, there is something inconsistent about the way the woman in the portrait is
dressed. She is wearing a white linen cap of a kind that only servants would wear
yet the coat she is wearing has a luxrious fur collar tha no servant could afford.
Rembrandt, who was known for his attention to the details of his subjects' clothing,
would not have been guilty of such an inconsistency.
Second, Rembrandt was a master of painting light and shadow, but in this painting
these elements do not fit together. The face appears to be illuminated by light
reflected onto it from below. But below the face is the dark fur collar, which would
absorb light rather than reflect it. So the face should appear paritally in shadow which
is now how it appears. Rembrandt woudl never have made such an error.
Finally, examination of the back of the painting reveals that it was painted on a panel
made of several pieces of wood glued together. Although Rembrandt often paitned on wood
panels, no painting known to be by Rembrandt uses a panel glued together in this way from
several pieces of wood.