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Is Norton Simon’s Rembrandt Real?

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TIMES ART WRITER

A painting that the Norton Simon Museum displays as a self-portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn is actually the work of his pupil, Carel Fabritius, according to a panel of experts in Amsterdam. The Simon work is among 39 paintings that have been falsely attributed to the 17th-Century Dutch master, the Rembrandt Research Group announced on Friday.

But the Simon museum rejects the panel’s assessment of its painting and has no plans to change the attribution, according to Vickie Rogers, director of program planning.

“We do not endorse the methods of the Rembrandt Research Group. Rembrandt attributions have been debated for 300 years, and this is just the latest chapter in that discussion. History will decide,” Rogers said.

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The 1637 portrait will remain on view along with the museum’s two other Rembrandt paintings, “Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Titus” and “Picture of a Bearded Man in Wide-brimmed Hat,” Rogers said.

The Norton Simon Museum acquired the self-portrait for about $3.8 million at auction in 1969. If sold as a genuine Rembrandt, the painting would probably bring more than $10 million today. But as the work of Fabritius, who is known as a Rembrandt imitator, the painting’s value would drop to a fraction of that. Rembrandt’s 1632 “Portrait of a Young Girl Wearing a Gold-Trimmed Cloak” brought a record $10.3 million at auction in 1986. Fabritius’ auction record, set in 1985 for “Mercur et Argus,” is $776,000.

The Rembrandt Research Group, which is subsidized by the Dutch government, began to systemically examine all 500 to 600 works attributed to Rembrandt 20 years ago. The group analyzes the paint, cloth or wood backing, the painting style and signature, according to project director Jozua Bruin. Results of the panel’s findings are being published in a series of five books.

The group on Friday released the 820-page third volume of its “Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings,” which studied 86 works from 1635 to 1642, in a ceremony at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

About half of the paintings examined in the new volume are not genuine Rembrandts, according to the group. The percentage of devalued works is about the same in the first two publications. Volume 1 and Volume 2, published in 1982 and 1986, exposed a total of about 100 paintings as having been incorrectly attributed to Rembrandt. Most of them are not fakes but the work of Rembrandt’s students and studio assistants, according to the research group. Rembrandt is believed to have signed the paintings to bring the highest possible price.

The most recent of the research group’s publications said that “David’s Parting from Jonathan” and “Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard” at the Hermitage in Leningrad are probably by one of Rembrandt’s most famous students, Ferdinand Bol.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art acknowledged some time ago that its “Portrait of a 70-year-old Woman,” which was cited by the panel as the work of Franz Hals, is likely by another artist.

Among other paintings that were downgraded in the third volume is “Landscape with Carriage,” owned by the Wallace Collection in London. Rembrandt’s monumental “Night Watch,” a prized possession of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, was declared an authentic example of the master’s work, however.

The ongoing study has set off a stream of controversy as museums and collectors agonize over whether to accept the panel’s findings--and the drastically reduced values of their paintings. The San Diego Museum of Art’s “Rembrandt,” a 1631 painting called “Young Man With Cock’s Feather in His Cap,” was declared to be the work of Rembrandt’s student, Isack Jouderville, in 1986. The museum changed the attribution to Jouderville just this week after assessing the panel’s findings.

The Simon museum is not the only one to reject the group’s rulings, however. The Metropolitan Museum of Art flatly refused to accept a 1986 judgment of the project, as have Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Some critics say the project’s stylistic analysis is too rigorous and that it has led to mistaken rejections of some works. Others fault the group’s scientific methods.

“It’s only natural that a project of such magnitude provokes scientific criticism,” Bruin said. “But of course, Rembrandt is a special cause. Think of the financial interests involved,” Bruin said at a press conference. “You can’t carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing some beards.”

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The final two volumes on about 200 paintings done between 1643 and Rembrandt’s death in 1669 are expected to be released by the project during the next decade.

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