Responses to Rembrandt: Who Painted the Polish Rider?, a Controversy Considered

Controversy erupted when the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), a team of Dutch art scholars, suggested in 1984 that The Polish Rider , which hangs in Manhattan's Frick Museum, was not painted by Rembrandt, but rather by his pupil, Willem Drost. In this elegantly written inquiry, part of which ran in the New Yorker , novelist and essayist Bailey contends that even though RRP uses scientific methods such as chemical analysis of pigments and X-ray photography, the group sometimes makes wrongheaded attributions by ignoring subjective and historical data. Bailey, who is very skeptical of RRP's attribution of the picture to Drost, concedes that only 12 paintings in existence can be proved indisputably to be Rembrandt's by way of documents and unbroken provenance. Illustrated with oils and etchings by Rembrandt and his contemporaries, Bailey's investigation is an eye-opening look at the highly subjective world of connoisseurship. (Apr.)