The Darmstadt Flagellation of Christ: Searching for Clues in a Difficult Painting

Throughout the 19th century, the Flagellation of Christ in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt was regarded as one of the most important late works of Rembrandt, but in the 20th century it was divested of its autograph status and classified as a workshop production. This article will consider whether that current assessment is justified. A stylistic evaluation of the painting is now nearly impossible due to both the extensive overpainting and what appears to have been serious damage inflicted on the original paint layers. Thanks in particular to a large pentimento discovered during a past X-radiographic examination, it has long been clear that the composition came into being in a complex working process. Micro-X-ray fluorescence analysis (micro-XRF) now permits a more precise understanding of the picture’s genesis. Not only does this make the work’s original conception more comprehensible, it also paves the way for a renewed discussion of the attribution.