Rembrandt’s fingerprints ‘discovered on 1655 sketch’

FINGERPRINTS thought to be those of Rembrandt have been discovered on a small oil sketch dating back almost 400 years.

Study Of A Head Of A Young Man, just over 25cm high, is expected to fetch about £6 million when it is auctioned in London next month.

Buried in the original layer of paint, in the lower edge of the “powerful and touching” 17th-century portrait, experts found what are believed to be the Dutch master’s thumbprints, pictured. No other fingerprints of the painter, the “foremost master of the Western artistic tradition”, have ever been found.

While it is impossible to confirm the prints are Rembrandt’s, experts believe they are his. They were uncovered during technical examination of the picture and restoration, which included pigment analyses, X-ray and infrared imaging, just before it went on display in the US and the Louvre in Paris in 2011-12.

George Gordon, worldwide cochairman for Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s, which will be putting the work under the hammer, called the find an “extraordinary discovery”.

He said that, from the placing of the thumbprints, i t wa s p o s s i b l e to i ma g i n e the painting being “picked up with their fingers behind it and their thumbs on the lower edge.

“You often get finger and thumbprints in the varnish of painting, but that doesn’t really tell you anything of interest. This is in the original paint. This shows Rembrandt was happy with the painting while it was still wet.”

The portrait, dating from around 1655, portrays Rembrandt’s model as Jesus, hands clasped in prayer.

⬤ Sotheby’s London Old Masters Evening Sale is on December 5.

The painting will go on display at Sotheby’s London from November 30.