# The Man with the Golden Helmet > Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn - About 1650 to 1655 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/circle-of-rembrandt/man-with-the-golden-helmet/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-05 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn - **Date:** About 1650 to 1655 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 67.5 x 50.7 cm; framed 93.5 x 77.1 x 8 cm - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Dutch, seventeenth century - **Current location:** Gemaeldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, on deposit from the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein - **Attribution:** rejected ## Summary An old man's head and shoulders, turned to the right, in an iron gorget under an ornamental helmet loaded with gold paint so thick that it stands off the canvas while the face beside it sinks into shadow. For most of the twentieth century it was among the most reproduced pictures in Germany, hanging as a print, and in embroidery, in a very large number of ordinary homes. It was bought for Berlin in 1897 as a Rembrandt.In 1986 the Gemaeldegalerie concluded that it is not. That conclusion is the subject of this record, and the precise wording matters: the museum withdrew an attribution. It did not find a fake, and the curator who announced the finding said so at the time in as many words. The picture was made in Rembrandt's lifetime by somebody who worked in his studio or was in close contact with him, and it is still one of the finest things in the gallery.The examination that unmade it also found something that changes how the object is read. The canvas had been cut down on all sides, and large areas, chiefly in the face, had been filled in or painted over by restorers, under an ochre varnish that gave the picture the warm gallery tone by which generations had recognised it as Rembrandtesque. A judgement of authorship had been made about a surface that was substantially not the painter's. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **about 1650-1655** Painted in the circle of Rembrandt van Rijn `[documented]` (origin) Made by a painter who worked in Rembrandt's studio or was in close contact with him, on the Berlin museum's own statement. Unsigned. No commission, patron or first owner is recorded, which is normal for a tronie made for the open market. - **before 1761-unknown** Clemens August of Bavaria, archbishop-elector of Cologne `[disputed]` (reported ownership) The picture is said to have come from the personal estate of Clemens August, who died in 1761. The claim is reported as probable and is not documented in the sources consulted here. It is recorded because it is in circulation, not because it is established. - **unknown-early 1890s** The De Boccard family, Fribourg, Switzerland `[documented]` (collection) Recorded in Hofstede de Groot's catalogue of 1915 as coming from the De Boccard collection at Fribourg. The picture left the collection in the early 1890s. - **early 1890s-1897** P. and D. Colnaghi and Company, London `[documented]` (trade) The London dealers who handled the picture between the Swiss collection and Berlin, on Hofstede de Groot's account. No price is published in the sources consulted. - **1897-present** Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein, Berlin, in the Gemaeldegalerie `[documented]` (acquisition) Bought in 1897 by the museum association for the Berlin picture gallery and acquired as an autograph Rembrandt through Wilhelm von Bode. Catalogued as 811A in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum catalogue of 1911 and still under that number. Attribution to Rembrandt withdrawn by the Gemaeldegalerie in 1986 after technical and art-historical examination, and the picture recatalogued as circle of Rembrandt. Restored towards its reconstructed original colouring in 2011. Ownership rests with the Verein rather than the state. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - No auction record for this picture appears in the sources consulted. It moved from a Swiss private collection through a London dealer to a Berlin museum association in 1897, all by private treaty, and no figure for any of those transactions has been published. There is therefore no hammer and no premium to separate. Any price quoted for a painting under this title should be checked against the picture at Bratislava, O 2246, which carries the same name. ## Open questions - Who painted it? Carel van den Pluym, Heyman Dullaert and Johann Ulrich Mayr have all been proposed and none has been adopted. The museum's label says anonymous. - Where was the helmet made? The Berlin record says Spanish or Italian, late sixteenth century; other accounts say Augsburg. The identification would materially affect the Mayr proposal. - How much canvas was cut away, and when? The trimming is established but not quantified in the sources consulted, and neither is the date of the intervention. - What analytical techniques were used in the 1986 examination? The documentation names the Rathgen research laboratory and the Hahn-Meitner-Institut as collaborators, but the sources consulted do not enumerate the methods. - Did the painting really come from the estate of Clemens August, archbishop-elector of Cologne? This is reported as probable and is not documented in the sources consulted. - What did the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein pay in 1897, and what did the De Boccard family receive? No figure appears in the sources consulted. - Is the picture at Bratislava, O 2246, a seventeenth-century version, a later copy after the Berlin painting, or a copy after a lost common original? Its relation to this record's subject is unestablished here. ## Sources - [1] Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, museum-digital object record for Der Mann mit dem Goldhelm, Gemaeldegalerie, inventory 811A. The museum's own catalogue data: circle of Rembrandt, 1650-1660, canvas, 67.5 x 50.7 cm, framed 93.5 x 77.1 x 8 cm, described as a tronie, with the helmet identified as a Spanish or Italian ornamental war helmet of the late sixteenth century, the 1897 acquisition by Bode and the 1986 withdrawal of the attribution after investigation by technological and art-historical methods. - [2] Wikipedia, 'The Man with the Golden Helmet'. Tertiary source, used for Hofstede de Groot's 1915 catalogue entry number 261 and the De Boccard and Colnaghi provenance, the Adriaen van Rijn identification and its refutation, the 1984 Dutch commission, and Jan Kelch's November 1985 statement as reported in The Ottawa Citizen of 20 November 1985. Flagged for replacement with Hofstede de Groot 1915 and the Kelch documentation of 1986. - [3] Wikipedia (German), 'Der Mann mit dem Goldhelm'. Tertiary source, used for the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein ownership, the reported Clemens August provenance, the Hofstede de Groot and Bredius objections of 1897, Sumowski 1957, the cropping and overpainting findings, the ochre varnish and the 2011 restoration, the candidate painters and the Augsburg reading of the helmet. Its bibliography names Jan Kelch (ed.), Der Mann mit dem Goldhelm: eine Dokumentation der Gemaeldegalerie in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Rathgen-Forschungslabor SMPK und dem Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin (Berlin, 1986) and Ernst A. Busche, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 75 (2015), pp. 99-106, both flagged for direct consultation. - [4] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Google Art Project capture of the painting, carrying the Gemaeldegalerie Berlin institution field, the circle-of-Rembrandt creator field, the dimensions 67.5 x 50.7 cm and the public-domain licence tag. Read as wikitext. - [5] Berliner Zeitung, Ingeborg Ruthe, 'KI haelt den Goldhelm fuer einen Rembrandt - Berlin widerspricht', published 4 September 2026. Reports a 2 September 2026 Deutschlandfunk radio segment on an AI-based image analysis by an unnamed American IT couple claiming 96 percent probability that the painting is Rembrandt's own hand, and carries a direct on-record response from Katja Kleinert, deputy director and curator of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting at the Gemaeldegalerie, stating the museum was not consulted, that no high-resolution photograph of the painting was requested for the analysis, and that the Gemaeldegalerie's own dedicated Rembrandt-paintings research project had already re-examined the picture and reconfirmed the 1986 de-attribution. Also reports that an earlier, separate AI-based reattribution claim 'from the German side' had been made previously, likewise without contacting the museum. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.