Note 3 — Paper 61

The date is unquestionably difficult to read. Bartsch misread it as 1636 (op. cit., p. 148). Charles Middleton (Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Rembrandt van Ryn, London, 1878, p. 299) was the first to identify the date as 1650. This has been accepted by all modern authorities except George Biörklund (Rembrandt's Etchings: True and False, Stockholm, 1955, no. 52-A, p. 103) who reads it as 1652. This seems unlikely to me, not only on the great stylistic affinity of this print to Rembrandt's unquestioned works of 1650, but also on the basis of my own reading of the date. The presumed digit "2" is quite unlike the "2" in Hind's 257 and 263, Rembrandt's only dated prints of 1652. (See figure 16.)