The panel on which the scene was painted offered another line of evidence. Through dendrochronology, researchers determined that the panel came from a tree felled between 1625 and 1640, which aligns with the painting’s 1633 inscription. At about 23 by 19 inches, the dimensions also align with other known Rembrandt works from this period.
Rembrandt was a newcomer to Amsterdam when he painted Vision of Zacharias in the Temple at 27 years old. He had recently moved north from his birthplace of Leiden and was primarily producing portraits, which were more lucrative than history scenes, making the reattributed painting a relatively rare document of his ambitions. The piece depicts a biblical account of the archangel Gabriel visiting the high priest Zacharias and his wife to tell them that they would have a son, John the Baptist, despite their advanced age. Rembrandt’s decision to render Gabriel invisible and focus on Zacharias’ expression of wonder departed from visual conventions of the time. Most artists chose to explicitly paint the angel’s presence rather than imply it.
Definitive attribution of Old Master paintings, meanwhile, is becoming more contested as new tools enter the field. An AI firm called Art Recognition recently claimed with up to 91% certainty that two paintings attributed to Jan van Eyck were misattributed. The claim was fiercely disputed by van Eyck specialist Maximiliaan Martens who raised concerns that the AI model was not properly trained and lacked art historical oversight. In 2021, Art Recognition claimed that the National Gallery in London had a fake Peter Paul Rubens, countering the general consensus among experts that it’s an authentic painting.
