The Studiando Rembrandt exhibition will be running at Palazzo Medici Riccardi from December 8, 2022 to January 29, 2023. After the completion of a careful restoration and in-depth research campaign, which was presented at Villa Medici Symposium in June 2021, the museum will be displaying the recently rediscovered Rembrandt painting The Adoration of the Magi to the public for the first time. The exhibition presents the magical painting alongside the studies and analyses that led to it being attributed to Rembrandt.
Copies of the paintings can be found at museums in Gothenburg, Sweden and St. Petersburg, Russia, but until now the original was considered to be lost by scholars, including the Rembrandt Research Project. Having been missing for centuries, the masterpiece was recently discovered in Rome in a family’s private collection, which dates back to the 16th century. It was discovered when it underwent restoration in 2016 after falling off the wall and, during the cleaning process, the restorer Antonella di Francesco realized it may have been the original.
Due to intense diagnostic analysis, including the use of infrared reflectography, it was possible to study elements of the painting that are invisible to the naked eye. These discoveries are shared in the exhibit, alongside comparisons with the two other versions of the work, allowing visitors to really explore the image in depth, investigate the relationship with the other two works, and understand the processes and reasonings that went into the attribution of the work to Rembrandt.
