Was this impression printed during Rembrandt's lifetime, or later?

This is the question everything else feeds. Rembrandt's copper plates survived him and were printed, reworked and reprinted for a very long time afterwards. An impression pulled in the seventeenth century and one pulled in the nineteenth are the same image and are not the same object: they differ in what they record about the plate, in what they can be used to study, and in where they sit in the history of the print's transmission. The honest position today is that the project does not know, and no part of this record assumes an answer.

Nothing decisive. The working record's state attribution, if correct, would bear on it. The paper has not been examined. The plate wear has not been assessed.

• This is a later impression rather than a lifetime one.

  Possible

  Recorded as a hypothesis with no evidence currently behind it. The plate was reworked and reprinted for centuries, so later impressions are simply more numerous than early ones — but a prior about the population is not evidence about a sheet, and it is not treated as any here.

1. 01Resolve the watermark question (RQ-04) — the strongest single line of evidence.
2. 02Resolve the state question (RQ-02) against the catalogue.
3. 03Assess plate wear against securely dated impressions (RQ-09, RQ-12).
4. 04Examine the ink and printing character alongside comparator impressions, with a specialist.

Convergence of the paper evidence, the state determination and the plate-wear assessment. No single one of them settles it alone.

• Impression census

• RQ-02Which of the four New Hollstein states is this impression, and what distinguishes state III from state IV?
• RQ-04Does the sheet carry a watermark, and can it narrow the period in which this impression was printed?
• RQ-09Does any drypoint burr survive in this impression, and what does the plate wear indicate?
• RQ-12Which institutional impressions are the right comparators for assessing wear in this one?