[HN Gopher] Rijksmuseum researchers discover new painting by Rem...
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       Rijksmuseum researchers discover new painting by Rembrandt van Rijn
        
       Author : ohjeez
       Score  : 132 points
       Date   : 2026-03-04 15:42 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.rijksmuseum.nl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.rijksmuseum.nl)
        
       | apt-get wrote:
       | ... with a high-resolution scan of the work itself available for
       | download, to boot. I really appreciate whenever museums go out of
       | their way to share those publically! Much better than many
       | paintings only officially available as some 400px thumbnail.
        
         | microtonal wrote:
         | Obligatory link to the hi-res viewer of the Nachtwacht (Night
         | Watch):
         | 
         | https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/stories/operation-night-watch/...
        
         | celaleddin wrote:
         | Yes! I visited Rijksmuseum a few years ago with a close friend
         | and I liked the painting "The Gulf of Naples with the Island of
         | Ischia in the Distance" very much. I downloaded the high
         | quality scan from the painting's museum web page[1] and got it
         | printed onto a canvas to hang in our apartment. We really enjoy
         | its presence with my wife!
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/The-Gulf-
         | of-...
        
           | neduma wrote:
           | > got it printed onto a canvas to hang
           | 
           | How, Care to share the steps. I'm thinking of the same thing.
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | It's a cool story.
       | 
       | As a [former] artist, myself, the thing that comes to mind, is
       | the model must have been in _real_ discomfort, after about 3
       | minutes.
        
         | Nevermark wrote:
         | Yeah. Even with an "air" book! A couple support canes could
         | help.
        
       | forinti wrote:
       | I'm currently reading Heretics by the Cuban writer Leonardo
       | Padura. The plot centers around a Rembrandt stolen from a Jewish
       | family that tried to flee to Cuba in the 1930s and a big part of
       | the story follows a young Jewish artist that takes up a kind of
       | apprenticeship with Rembrandt. Padura seems to like stories that
       | span many decades and even centuries as in this book.
       | 
       | Anyway, the book does a good job of describing Rembrandt's life
       | even if the story is mostly fiction.
        
       | Tepix wrote:
       | The Rijksmuseum is amazing, reserve a day on your next visit to
       | Amsterdam and take it all in!
       | 
       | I also like their tech stack, they let you use your own phone +
       | headphones for the guided tours.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | Yes. Don't know if I'll make it again on my upcoming trip--
         | missed the Van Gogh last time because it was sold out but have
         | tickets this time. It always amazes me how quickly schedules
         | fill up. Doesn't help that I'm also working.
        
         | derektank wrote:
         | Beautiful building too. The busker playing the accordion in the
         | tunnel was a kind of magical addition to the experience
        
         | drob518 wrote:
         | Definitely. This museum is great if you love Dutch masters,
         | particularly Rembrandt. Highly recommended.
        
         | JoshTriplett wrote:
         | The Rijksmuseum is incredible, but also huge; the kind of
         | museum you pick a small fraction of to see in any given trip.
         | There are also several smaller museums that you can see in a
         | day.
         | 
         | The Mauritshaus is a small museum in a converted manor,
         | containing an incredible number of famous paintings, notably by
         | Vermeer and Rembrandt.
         | 
         | Folks here might also appreciate the M. C. Escher museum.
        
       | wewewedxfgdf wrote:
       | "What's this painting here behind the couch? Did any of you guys
       | put this here? Hey, wait, what...... this is a Rembrandt!"
        
       | crote wrote:
       | _Re-attributed_ , to be more accurate.
       | 
       | The painting wasn't exactly unknown: its existence was reasonably
       | well-documented and it was included in a variety of Rembrandt
       | catalogues. However, in 1960 it was decided that it _wasn 't_ a
       | Rembrandt, so people mostly stopped caring about it.
       | 
       | This discovery is a re-analysis of the painting using modern
       | methods, which revealed that the 1960 "not a Rembrandt" decision
       | was a bit premature.
        
         | skrebbel wrote:
         | > However, in 1960 it was decided that it wasn't a Rembrandt,
         | so people mostly stopped caring about it.
         | 
         | I'll never understand this about the art scene. Like, if
         | Rembrandt was a shit painter, his works wouldn't have been so
         | valuable today. But then, suddenly, one random painting of his
         | is only interesting if it was actually made by him? If we can
         | judge his entire oeuvre on quality, why couldn't we do the same
         | with this one painting? How is it possible that people stop
         | caring about a painting just because it _wasn 't_ made by
         | Rembrandt?
         | 
         | I mean, is it a good painting or not? If not, why do we
         | suddenly care now? If it is, why didn't we before?
        
           | odyssey7 wrote:
           | Works of art are the original NFTs? Pricing is meme-like,
           | though over longer timescales.
        
           | loloquwowndueo wrote:
           | How art is valued is entirely illogical and irrational. Like
           | - that time an entire art installation was confused with
           | trash and thrown out. https://i-d.co/article/museum-cleaners-
           | thought-this-art-inst...
        
             | kleiba wrote:
             | Similarly to why you can pay 7-digit prices for a watch.
        
               | loloquwowndueo wrote:
               | At least that watch still tells the time.
        
               | SR2Z wrote:
               | Yeah, but mechanical watches are so much worse at telling
               | time than cheap digital watches that it's not even worth
               | discussing.
        
               | loloquwowndueo wrote:
               | Even a broken mechanical luxury watch is right twice a
               | day. A broken digital watch with a screen is useless when
               | it's broken.
               | 
               | (I'm just trolling at this point, let me know and we can
               | stop this)
        
             | anal_reactor wrote:
             | I don't think it's illogical nor irrational. When you look
             | at artworks below EUR5 000 then there should be correlation
             | between artistic value and price in euros. Not exactly a
             | linear function, but clear correlation. Above that you're
             | not buying artwork - you're buying the prestige and social
             | status of owning an expensive artwork. It's the rich
             | people's equivalent of buying Supreme clothes just to
             | impress the ladies.
        
           | elondaits wrote:
           | Because part of the price of a work of art is its perceived
           | historic / cultural importance. Autographs are taking this to
           | the extreme, where only the mark of the author exists, on its
           | own, and still gets a high price. On the other end, fakes and
           | very accurate reproductions, would never be as valued even if
           | the effect as a visual piece is practically the same.
        
             | lisper wrote:
             | NFTs are an attempt to recreate this dynamic in the digital
             | world.
        
           | bell-cot wrote:
           | "It is a _Rembrandt_ " carries heavy cache when rich men are
           | trying to one-up each other.
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | As someone who likes to hang things on walls, I'm rather
           | happy the art prices are as insane as they are. The antiques
           | shop down the street sometimes sells reasonably interesting
           | and/or nice original paintings for 10-20 eur. If it's someone
           | unknown it's gonna be dirt cheap, no matter how good. Imagine
           | if art prices were rational, what would I do?!
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | Unrelated, but I have never before seen that "ij" ligature in the
       | title.
        
         | jvdvegt wrote:
         | IJ is a seperate character (?) in Dutch There are more like
         | this: ei, eu, ui, oe, ch (and I'm probably forgetting some
         | others)
        
       | dmix wrote:
       | That's a pretty amazing painting, I like how they attached a high
       | quality jpg of it. Rembrandt is my favourite for sure.
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-08 23:01 UTC)