An art historian who assesses the attributions of particular paintings in a scholarly publication knows that this will have consequences for the art market. The art historian in question, however, usually prefers to ignore this because he sees his work as a value-free analysis of certain qualities of the artwork in the service of constructing art historical categorisations. However, the owner of the work will have a different opinion. What a painting is valued at on the art market – especially paintings dating from the last five centuries – mainly depends on the fact whether or not it is considered an autograph...

The question of whether seventeenth-century painters and connoisseurs had a different understanding of authenticity than we do today, has been the cause of much debate. Several scholars have even wondered if present-day connoisseurship is anachronistic in its efforts to distinguish the hand of a seventeenth-century master from those of his assistants and pupils. For was it not common for a seventeenth-century master to collaborate with his assistants and to sell the various studio products under his own name?

Nowadays connoisseurs tend to differentiate sharply between what is believed to be purely autograph work with paintings done in part or entirely...

A while ago, a large auction house contacted me about a sixteenth-century painting. They could not find the proper attribution. I suggested the name Huybrecht Beuckeleer, explaining that he was the son in law of Willem Key and the brother of Joachim. I could not be certain since little is known about this scion of the Beuckeleer family, and I therefore suggested that they should, at the very least, add a question mark after his name. The people at the auction house were appreciative of my suggestions, yet informed me that they were planning to call the painting ‘Circle of...

In an imaginary dialogue from 1538 written by the humanist Johannes Vives, we find Albrecht Dürer in a conversation with two imaginary learned men, Grynius and Velius.¹ They are talking about Dürer’s imaginary portrait of Scipio Africanus, which they want to see, either to buy it, or to criticise it, or possibly, to show off their knowledge, to the annoyance of the artist.

Dürer: Go away from here, for you will buy nothing …

Grynius: Nay, we wish to buy, only we wish you to leave the price to our judgement, and that you should state the limit of time...

One of the most intriguing types of pictures that emerged in the Netherlands during the Golden Age shows art lovers contemplating art in a collector’s cabinet or in an artist’s studio. For example, a painting by Jan Breughel the Elder and Hieronymus Franken depicts Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella together with a group of elegantly dressed men and women in a collector’s cabinet (fig. 1). Despite the verisimilitude of such scenes, many elements depicted were almost certainly fanciful. In this case, the grandeur of the architectural setting does not match the size of private residences at the time, and the...

Records indicate that specialist dealers have been operating as intermediaries in markets for paintings since at least the early sixteenth century. Throughout much of that long period, dealers served connoisseurs, who assumed, by virtue of their inherited status and wealth and the leisure and education both afforded, the role of arbiter in determining quality, and taste in the collecting of artworks.¹ During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, commercial wealth in the Low Countries, began to shift some of that role to specialist dealers; and, during the eighteenth century, in Paris, a new breed of dealer, whom we shall call...