Virgin and Child in the Clouds

The present sheet is a very rare counterproof of the Virgin and Child in the Clouds, one of only two recorded, the other being in the British Museum, London (inv. no. F,4.121). A counterproof is created by placing a freshly printed impression, with the ink still wet, onto a blank sheet and putting it through the press once more. The image is thereby transferred to the second sheet, but in reverse. Through the double-transfer – from plate to print to counterproof – the image on the counterproof is showing in the same direction as on the plate. This reversal allows the artist to explore and test some changes they might want to make to the plate by drawing onto the counterproof, before recommencing their work on the plate itself. Some counterproofs by Rembrandt show additions in pen and ink by his hand and were presumably created a trial proofs for just this purpose. However, most of Rembrandt’s counterproofs do not have any additional work, including the present example. This suggest that they also fulfilled other functions; in this case, it might have served the artist to compare his own print with Barocci's, but in the same orientation.

The surprising number of surviving counterproofs of some subjects in Rembrandt's oeuvre suggest that they were also produced as finished prints in their own right, to satisfy a discerning collector’s market hungry for such variants and oddities. To read the names of Mariette, Barnard, Koenigs, and lastly Josefowitz - some of the leading collectors and connoisseurs of their time - in the provenance of this sheet is testament to the enduring appeal of counterproofs and other such 'specialties'.