AT THE beginning of this century, there were 966 acknowledged paintings by Rembrandt. By 1970 that figure had been halved by art historians questioning previous attributions. By 3pm today, when the Rem-brandt Research Project presents the first copy of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings Volume III, the figure will be chipped away further.
The process will not stop there. The RRP, which has been working chronologically through Rembrandt's alleged paintings, expects to produce at least five more volumes well into the next century - when it expects the final figure to be no more than 300. The Rembrandt Research Project is an independent group of five Dutch scholars, led by Josua Bruyn, professor emeritus of art history at Amsterdam University, and Ernst van de Wetering, of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. It embarked on what is by far the most ambitious attempt to compile a complete catalogue of Rembrandt's paintings more than two decades ago. They have completed three volumes covering all paintings by, or attributed to, Rembrandt within the years 1625-1642. Rembrandt died in 1669, so they still have some way to go.
The RRP is greatly respected by the majority of Rembrandt scholars, but the committee's methods have become increasingly controversial. Many experts believe that it has been too rigorous in its exclusion of certain pictures, one of the chief criticism beings that it demands too great a level of consistency in Rembrandt.
Originally, the RRP believed that scientific analysis would greatly assist it in its decisions, but it has be-come to rely increasingly on stylistic analysis, which is inevitably subjective.
All the major disattributions in its new volume have been arrived at through stylistic analysis; the RRP has not discovered any materials in the pictures that might be scientifically dated...
