Rembrandt Began a Biblical Painting. Another Artist Finished It ‘Rather Crudely.’ Now, Restorations Have Revealed the Long-Lost Original

An art dealer stumbled across “Let the Little Children Come Unto Me” at a German auction house in 2014. Experts have now carefully removed layers of overpaint from the forgotten masterpiece

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

June 30, 2026 3:10 p.m.

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He’s hiding in The Night Watch, his right eye peeking out from behind a group of civic guardsmen. In Descent From the Cross, the same man stands on a ladder and helps lower Jesus’s body. He also appears in Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, clinging to his cap and gazing out at the viewer as the disciples weather a violent storm.

This supporting character is likely Rembrandt van Rijn, the artist himself. The 17th-century Dutch painter sometimes inserted himself into biblical or historical scenes. Because of these cameos, along with his many self-portraits, art historians have a clear sense of what Rembrandt looked like.

In 2014, art dealer Jan Six was flipping through a German auction house catalog when he noticed a painting with this familiar figure positioned in the background, looking straight ahead. Titled Let the Little Children Come Unto Me, it was billed as a mid-17th-century artwork from the Netherlandish school—but Rembrandt wasn’t listed as the artist.

“I thought, ‘Hang on, he’s such a young man, around 20. Who would paint Rembrandt in a picture then?’” Six told Artnet’s Henri Neuendorf in 2018. “Rembrandt wasn’t famous at that moment, so the only person who could have done that is himself.”

Six purchased the painting for around $1.7 million, and experts ultimately confirmed that it was, indeed, a long-lost Rembrandt. Since then, conservators have been working on a meticulous restoration, removing layers of overpaint added by another artist. On July 1, the scene will go under the hammer at a Sotheby’s auction, where it’s expected to fetch between roughly $10.6 million and $15.9 million.

Rembrandt likely started the painting in 1627, when he was still living in Leiden, the Dutch city where he was born. But he never finished the piece, leaving it behind when he moved to Amsterdam in the 1630s. According to the lot listing, another artist completed it “rather crudely” at a later date.

The painting’s provenance is unclear, though experts say its first owner could have been Floris Soop, an Amsterdam collector. In 1657, Soop’s records describe “a large painting depicting Christ calling the small children to him.” This piece may have passed to a relative, who owned a “large chimney piece done by Rembrandt,” according to a 1661 inventory. Records suggest that the man sold two large paintings by Rembrandt at auction two years later.

“There is certainly no proof that the present picture is the one listed in these three inventories, by Rembrandt and of this subject,” the lot listing notes. “But it remains plausible, all the more so because no other painting by Rembrandt of this subject, large or small, is known.”

Now, Rembrandt’s original unfinished work is visible once again. The restoration revealed substantial changes, such as replacing some figures with completely different ones. For instance, Rembrandt had painted Christ holding a baby, but the revised version shows him placing his hand on the head of an older child.

One of the biggest changes involved a tall man whom Rembrandt had painted with a dark beard and a turban, perhaps suggesting that he wasn’t a Christian. The artist who finished the painting gave him a white beard and removed his turban, replacing it with a “local Dutch cap,” according to Artnet’s Richard Whiddington.

“It was made into a more traditional, conventional treatment of the subject by the later overpainting, the original having a more diverse cast of characters,” Alex Bell, the chair emeritus of Sotheby’s U.K., tells the Guardian’s Dalya Alberge. The new restoration demonstrates “the extent to which the painting was simplified, or sanitized, by subsequent intervention.”

The work depicts a biblical scene featured in the Gospels of Luke, Mark and Matthew. Parents bring their children to Jesus, hoping to receive a blessing, and the disciples try to turn them away. But Christ welcomes them in, saying, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

The painting shows the children crowding around Jesus, as several of the disciples reflect on the scene from the side. “It’s maybe one of the first great Rembrandt crowd scenes,” Andrew Graham-Dixon, the art historian who assessed the painting for Sotheby’s, says in a video.

Rembrandt’s version depicts figures from various faiths. At the time, as the Thirty Years’ War devastated central Europe, thousands of refugees were flooding into Leiden. Graham-Dixon theorizes that the painting reflects this population shift, perhaps even placing Rembrandt “on the side of humanitarian relief.” He adds, “I think it’s a statement of Rembrandt’s moral position.”

In addition to painting himself into the scene, Rembrandt appears to have included several other familiar faces. “That, for my money, is surely Rembrandt’s mother,” Graham-Dixon says, pointing to an older woman with a blue head covering. According to the lot listing, a younger woman beside the artist’s mother may be “the orphaned godchild that Rembrandt’s father took into his house.” The artist also painted an older man with features resembling his father’s standing in an archway at the back of the crowd.

“He paints the people he knows,” Graham-Dixon adds. “He paints the people who are around him and uses them in his pictures—which is intensely practical, and I think rather moving.”

Ellen Wexler | | Read More

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.