The year 2006 marks the 4ooth anniversary of the birth of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and, at the National Gallery and elsewhere, reassessments of his oeuvre continue to generate controversy. Rembrandt scholarship is uniquely fascinating by virtue of the artist's towering importance in European art and because, since the nineteenth century, his name has been associated, as that of no other artist, with a constant discussion around the authenticity of his paintings. In the process of the - often heated - debates about attributions, many works have lost, gained, and lost again, their status as 'authentic' Rembrandts.While Cornelis Hofstede de Groot in 1913 identified 988 works by the master's hand, by 1968 Horst Gerson's book on the artist had shrunk the group to 420, and the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), established by the Dutch government in 1968 to define Rembrandt's oeuvre once and for all, will probably end up with no more than about 300 accepted paintings.

Art in the Making: Rembrandt was a ground-breaking publication;first published in 1988, it launched a series of award-winning catalogues which presents the results of research into the techniques of European painting, carried out by the National Gallery's conservation, curatorial and scientific specialists. The series proved enormously popular with general readers as well as with students,conservators and art historians, and remains essential reading.

Publication of this new edition marks the 400th anniversary of the artist's birth in 16o6. The book takes account of significant developments in Rembrandt scholarship over the last 20 years,and addresses problems of attribution that were hardly touched on in the original edition. All the works originally catalogued are included here, although some have been reassessed, and new entries have been added for paintings once attributed to Rembrandt but now considered to be by other hands. What remains the same is the scrupulous examination of every work that forms the basis for the descriptions of technique and arguments for attribution.

Introductory essays cover the artist's studio and working methods, the training of painters in seventeenth-century Holland,and Rembrandt's materials and technique. The essays are followed by catalogue entries on 21 paintings firmly attributed to Rembrandt,and six now assigned to followers. A comprehensive bibliography provides a rich source of information about the practice of oil painting, not only for Rembrandt but for seventeenth-century Dutch painting in general. Tables conveniently summarise the results of analysis of the ground layers and paint medium of the National Gallery's Rembrandts.

DAVID BOMFORD is Senior Restorer, JO KIRBY is Senior Scientific Officer, A S H O K ROY is Director of Scientific Research and RAY M O N D W H I T E is former Principal Scientific Officer at the National Gallery, London. AXEL RUGER, formerly Curator of Dutch Paintings at the National Gallery, is Director of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Sponsor's Foreword

Director's Foreword

Introduction

DAVID BOMFORD AND AXEL ROGER

ESSAYS

Studio practice and the training of artists

JO KIRBY

Rembrandt's materials and technique

The ground layer:function and type

ASHOK ROY

The paint layers

DAVID BDMFORD

Rembrandt' s palette

ASHOK ROY AND JO KIRBY

Rembrandt's paint medium

RAYMOND WHITE, with assistance from CATHERINE HIGGITT

CATALOGUE

DAVID BOMFORD, ASHOK ROY AND AXEL ROGER

Works by Rembrandt

Works by Followers of Rembrandt

Notes to essays

Tables

Dutch seventeenth-century painting materials and methods: an annotated bibliography

Bibliography

Glossary

Photographic credits

Index of works