Rembrandt or not Rembrandt – that is also the question in this picture. Why the long-lost painting is now associated with Baroque genius, but is not expected to fetch a record price at auction.
This winter the art market is facing Rembrandt fireworks. Christie’s presents beautiful prints by Dutch painter and printmaker Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) in London on December 3. In February 2026, rival Sotheby’s will release the lion in New York: a strikingly vivid animal drawing by the Baroque genius. American billionaire and philanthropist Thomas Kaplan auctioned them off to benefit endangered wild cats.
But Sotheby’s also caused a sensation on December 3 at its Old Masters auction in London with a painting missing for about a hundred years and only a dim black and white photo remaining. A late work created around 1660, in which Rembrandt painted his son Titus, who died in 1668 at the age of 26 – or more precisely: printed him on canvas with rough strokes.
Flashback: In December 2024, the reporter sits in the modest London office of George Gordon, who has been Sotheby’s detective for Old Masters for 45 years – and is amazed. On the wall of a cupboard in New Bond Street hangs an unidentified picture with the distinct facial features of Titus van Rijn, known from half a dozen known Rembrandt paintings. Gordon immediately requested that the surprising observation be kept secret. The mysterious object has just arrived from Argentina, still unexplored. Yes, it’s not even known for certain whether it’s really Rembrandt.
In November 2025, after a year of “secret Rembrandt operations” at Sotheby’s, Deputy Chairman Gordon will meet again with WELT AM SONNTAG. This time in Amsterdam, the city where the miller’s son Rembrandt of Leiden began his world career. First question under the freshly cleaned image: Is that really a “real” Rembrandt?
“We have come a long way in exploration. There is now no doubt,” emphasized George Gordon. “X-ray images and infrared images provide evidence of the working process. Rembrandt himself made the changes; the brushwork on the clothes is almost identical to the painting of his lover Hendrickje in the Frankfurt Städelmuseum.”
When asked which experts accepted Titus as a Rembrandt after the death in 2021 of Professor Ernst van de Wetering, whose judgment had almost the status of papal infallibility, Gordon shrugged: “We’ve had to do our own work since then.” The problem: In some countries, museum curators are no longer allowed to use Rembrandt’s expertise for the art market.
Technical investigations carried out by the auction house, including Petria Noble, chief conservator of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, revealed a deeper iconographic meaning of the painting. Rembrandt painted not only his son, but Titus in the form of the evangelist John. “We suddenly discovered the sign of an eagle to the right of Titus, the evangelist’s heraldic animal. And because there was still a palm tree growing and Titus, who was very introspective, looking down behind his book, it was clear to me: That was John, who was on the Greek island of Patmos, contemplating the revelation he had just completed,” Gordon explains emphatically.
Who seems to have been clarified. And from where? The path of the (unsigned) painting is confusing. From the Netherlands it migrated to Leipzig, where it was acquired by the merchant Gottfried Winckler in the 18th century. Proud collectors will take their treasures to galleries, as was common in pre-photography times. This is where the first recorded images came from, which at that time were still round and curved.
After Winckler’s death, the journey of the Titus portrait continued via London to New York. In 1913, German-American art historian and museum expert Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner purchased the now clearly cropped drawing at auction for $525 – downgraded as a student work by Carel Fabritius. Valentiner then published it for the first time in 1920 in his text “Fate of a Picture” as Rembrandt’s own work, along with a black and white photo that hid rather than illuminated the quality of the work.
After further stops, it finally ended with steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, who was originally a great admirer of Hitler. However, in early 1935, Thyssen broke with the Nazi regime after failing to advocate for persecuted Jewish politicians with Hermann Göring. Hitler’s deputy and art raider, Göring, had inquired about Thyssen-Rembrandt (according to the book “The Thyssens as Art Collectors”, published in 2015), but the painting was rescued from his grasp. After his deportation and imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and subsequent internment by the Allies, Thyssen emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1949. And with him most of his collection.
Thyssen’s descendants sent a portrait of Titus to a London auction house last year. In a few days, it will be auctioned for the benefit of the family foundation. The lower estimate equates to 5.7 million euros. It sounds modest compared to Rembrandt’s lion drawing, which is estimated to be worth at least 13 million euros.
And Gordon admits: “It must be said that the condition of the painting is not the best. We only cleaned it and deliberately did not restore it in depth. You can see its past, but that does not contradict the quality of the painting. It is a fine work by Rembrandt and made entirely by his hand. It is an honor to have it in my office and study it every day.”
What future invention now hangs in the empty room in his office? Then the man smiled – and was silent.
