Who Is That Boy in Fancy Dress

Description

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Curator of Northern Baroque Paintings. More than forty years after Rembrandt’s painting Portrait of a Boy in Fancy Dress (c. 1655), or "Titus," made its first Washington appearance, it has returned to the National Gallery of Art for several months through September 2007 as part of a new series of loan exchanges between the Gallery and the Norton Simon Foundations in Pasadena, CA. Installed in the Rembrandt galleries next to the artist’s Self-Portrait (1659), it sparks intriguing questions: Who is this young boy? Is it Rembrandt’s son? What is the mysterious animal on his shoulder? How does the portrait relate to a nearby painting by Hans Holbein? Host Alan Shestack probes these and other interesting questions with curator Arthur Wheelock.