How a Lost Rembrandt Rewrote Art History

In May 2014, when a painting of Jesus blessing children was found at a German auction house, it was attributed to an unknown seventeenth-century Netherlandish artist and bought for €1.5 million (around £1.2m at the time).

But what stood out in the crowded biblical scene was a depiction of Rembrandt in the background, glancing at the viewer. Soon after, it was revealed to be by the Dutch painter himself, and it is now up for auction at Sotheby’s in London on 1 July with a high estimate of £12m. 

Let the Little Children Come Unto Me (1627) follows the tradition of other lost works by prominent artists, bringing with it a story that turns our understanding of art history, the artist and their practice on its head.

After a decade of restoration, specialists uncovered that another artist substantially altered the unfinished work around five to 20 years after it was created.

“We did not fully appreciate how much the later overpaint had simplified the image,” says Alex Bell, chairman emeritus at Sotheby's UK. “Its removal has restored the drama, complexity and humanity of the scene.”

The original painting offers several new figures, including the most complete depiction of Rembrandt’s family members known to date. But, notably, a bearded man is now wearing a turban at the centre of the piece. According to British art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, the addition of the potentially Muslim person, who had been painted over to look more conventionally Dutch, may transform the meaning of the work. “Rembrandt’s crowd represents his very broad sense of humanity, inclusive of [Christians], Jews and Muslims,” he tells The Art Journal. 

At the time of the painting, Rembrandt's hometown, Leiden, was receiving an influx of refugees due to the Thirty Years’ War, a series of interconnected wars in Europe between 1618 and 1648. Hundreds of thousands of people fled to the Dutch Republic, according to Graham-Dixon, who estimates that the city took in around 10,000 refugees in 1626 alone. 

He attributes this openness to Rembrandt's connection to the Remonstrants, a Protestant movement at the time. “We know that Rembrandt would in later life be sympathetic to the Jewish presence in Amsterdam, for example, and there is no reason to doubt that he had already arrived at his broadly tolerant outlook while still a young man in Leiden,” he says. 

But looking at old paintings, especially centuries after their production, comes with a hindsight perspective that may differ from the artist’s view. When Artemisia Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c.1615–17) was discovered in France in 2017, and acquired by the National Gallery in London a year later, for example, experts linked the piece to the ever-growing #MeToo movement of the time. 

Experts noted that Gentileschi was sexually harassed by a painter at the age of seventeen, which resulted in a trial that tainted her reputation. Like contemporary thinking about the Rembrandt painting, there was clear reasoning behind the connection between the Gentileschi and #MeToo, but there is a similar risk of unintentionally superimposing ideas onto a work that the artist might not have had when making it. 

Yet, much like today, the arrivals of refugees in Leiden did spark significant local backlash. And the idea, true or not, that such a revered artist was speaking up against prejudice – to the extent someone felt the need to cover it up – does offer a small sense of pride. But it’s worth mentioning that Rembrandt and his contemporaries often dressed biblical figures in ‘oriental’ clothing, such as turbans, to demonstrate the historical Middle Eastern (rather than northern European) setting being portrayed. 

Graham-Dixon argues that there are other examples to bolster this premise. “Rembrandt was a man full of pity, full of love, who responded to a world in crisis with his whole being,” he says. He points to “another much later great painting of his [also] inspired by a story of refugees”, The Jewish Bride (1665–69), which is said to portray Isaac and Rebekah, a biblical couple who left their home due to famine. “Such interpretations don’t distort Rembrandt; they remind us of why he has been so beloved a painter through so many generations,” he adds. “It is a regrettable fact that history repeats itself.”

Almost four centuries on, it’s hard to know for sure what Rembrandt was thinking while painting Let the Little Children Come Unto Me. But there is quiet solace in the thought that a much-loved and long-dead artist had upheld progressive views at a time when it likely would have been easier and more acceptable to believe otherwise.