Rembrandt ‘discovered’ after 400 years

A PAINTING hanging in the former home of Sir Francis Drake has been confirmed as a self-portrait by the Dutch master Rembrandt, the National Trust has announced.

For decades the picture, which has been at Buckland Abbey in Devon since it was given to the trust in 2010, was thought to have been a portrait produced by one of Rembrandt’s pupils.

But years of studying the 17th-century artist’s style and a new investigation of the painting by the world’s leading Rembrandt expert, Ernst van de Wetering, has re-attributed the painting as a work by the master himself.

The painting, kept in storage for the first 18 months that it was at Buckland Abbey as there was nowhere to hang it, is now one of the National Trust’s most important pieces. It has been given a value of £20 million, although as the trust holds items on behalf of the nation forever, the organisation said it can never be sold.

Jez McDermott, National Trust property manager at Buckland Abbey, said: “It’s amazing to think we might’ve had an actual Rembrandt hanging here on the walls at Buckland Abbey for the past couple of years.

“We never dared think it might be an original.”