Provenance

One documented sale, and 385 years of nothing

The timeline below is drawn to scale: one year is the same height wherever you are on it. Almost all of it is empty, and you have to scroll through the emptiness, because compressing it into a tidy graphic would misrepresent what is actually known.

1638

creation · the work, not this sheet

Rembrandt works the plate

Rembrandt etches the copper plate in Amsterdam. This event belongs to the work, not to this sheet: it is the origin of the image, and it is the only point on this timeline that is securely dated.

ProbableAmsterdamRembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

8Unreviewed submissionOwner's working object record, assembled 2026 · Owner / steward · 2026-08

Date unknown

printing

This impression is printed

At some point the plate was inked and this sheet was pulled from it. That moment may be contemporary with the plate, or it may be a century or more later. Nothing currently in the record fixes it. The paper is the evidence that would.

Unknown

1638

Undocumented

No documented ownership

Approximately 385 years for which the project holds no evidence of where this sheet was or who held it. This is not a stylistic gap in the narrative; it is the actual state of knowledge. Filling any part of it — a collector's mark, a dealer's stock number, an entry in a nineteenth-century sale catalogue — would be a substantive contribution.

1638 – 2023

What would fill any part of this

still nothing · 2023

2023

sale

Sold at Bonhams, New York

The sheet is offered and sold at auction in New York. The purchase is documented by invoice. The sale title, date and lot number are held in that document and have not yet been transcribed into this record; the consignor is not known to the project.

Strongly supportedNew YorkBonhams

2Primary documentBonhams invoice and purchase documentation, New York, 2023 · Bonhams · 2023on request
5Auction catalogueAuction catalogue entry for the lot as offered, Bonhams New York, 2023 · Bonhams · 2023on request

2023 – present

ownership

Private collection, Dubai

Held in a private collection in Dubai. The sheet has not been exhibited, lent, published or examined by a conservator during this period. It has not been displayed, so its cumulative light exposure in these years is nil.

ConfirmedDubai, United Arab EmiratesPrivate owner and steward

2Primary documentBonhams invoice and purchase documentation, New York, 2023 · Bonhams · 2023on request

12 August 2026

publication

Open research record published

The object receives the identifier NP-RMB-001 and a public record. Publication itself becomes part of the provenance: from this date the sheet has a citable, versioned scholarly history that travels with it.

ConfirmedThe Rembrandt Open Impression Project

How this timeline is built

Gaps are events. A gap has an id, a duration and a place in the record, and it is published in the API alongside the documented events rather than being the absence between them.

Two of the events on this timeline belong to the work rather than to this sheet. The plate being worked in 1638 is a fact about the composition; every impression of it shares that event. The moment this particular sheet was pulled from the plate is a fact about this sheet, and it is the one marked unknown.

Publication is itself a provenance event. From 12 August 2026 this sheet has a citable, versioned scholarly history that travels with it — which is a small thing now and compounds.