Smiling Rembrandt?

A £1.500 painting turns into a £3 million "Rembrandt"

October 28th 2007 - No other of the old masters is as attractive to the Art market as Rembrandt, whose works can easily fetch more than $20 million at auction. The latest example of this is what happened yesterday in a modest auction in Cirencester, in South East England, where a painting entitled "Young Rembrandt as Democritus, the smiling philosopher" attributed to a 19 th century painter and valued at a mere £1.500 ($3,000) reached the unbelievable price of 2 million pounds (almost $4.5 million). The reason? Two potential buyers firmly convinced it was a genuine work by Rembrandt himself

If the work is finally attributed to the Dutch master, it will surely be an excellent investment for the buyer despite the 3 million spent since the last self-portrait by Rembrandt appeared on the market was sold for $11.3 million at Sotheby's London in 2003.

Read more about Rembrandt's self-portraits