Abraham Bredius, a former director of the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, bought the Saul and David painting more than a century ago, but in the late 1960s Rembrandt expert Horst Gerson cast doubt on who actually painted the Biblical scene of King Saul using a curtain to dab a tear from his eye while David, kneeling below the king, plucks the strings of a harp.
Researchers used advanced X-ray techniques to peer through several coats of paint that had been applied during previous restorations and establish that the original pigments were the same as those Rembrandt used in the 17th century.
Paint sampling showed that the primer used was typical of Rembrandt's studio in the 1650s and 1660s.