Now, after eight years of examination and restoration by the museum’s own conservators — with support from researchers from various outside institutions, like the Delft University of Technology, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Netherlands Institute for Art History and Cornell University — the Mauritshuis has reclaimed the painting as an authentic Rembrandt, saying it was painted in two stages by the master’s own hand, one of hundreds of surviving Rembrandt paintings. After a CSI-style investigation, the Mauritshuis museum has declared on Tuesday that one... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo provided Tuesday, June 9, 2015 by Mauritshuis shows Rembrandt's "Saul and David" after restororation. A former director of the museum in The Hague, Abraham Bredius, bought the 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. “It’s a very special occasion,” said Ernst van de Wetering, a Dutch art historian, a leading authority on Rembrandt and one of eight members on the museum’s independent advisory committee. Director Gordenker said the museum did not set out to prove that the painting was indeed a Rembrandt. The varnish had gotten very yellow, and it was very hard to read.” 
 
 There were two key questions that Ms. Gordenker said she hoped to answer. Cut up, painted over and faded over time, "Saul and David" even had part of another painting stuck into its top right-hand corner. This technique isolates individual elements in pigments used to make the paint, allowing researchers to identify a greater range of colors than was ever possible with previous technology, said the team’s leader, Joris Dik, a professor in Delft’s department of materials science. Emilie Gordenker, the director of Mauritshuis, said the investigation turned up plenty of surprises.
– After centuries of mistreatment and nearly 50 years of mystery, a biblical painting in a Dutch museum has finally been declared an authentic Rembrandt. Experts say they needed "CSI-style" tools to authenticate Saul and David, which had been repeatedly over-painted in long-ago restorations and even cut in two at some point in the 19th century, possibly in an attempt to sell it as separate portraits of Saul and David, the New York Times reports. The Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery put the painting on display as a Rembrandt in 1898, but a leading expert cast doubt on its origin in 1969. A restoration expert tells the AP the skepticism now seems unsurprising because there had been so much paint added there was none of Rembrandt's left to see. Researcher used tools such as advanced X-ray techniques and paint sample analysis to determine that the Dutch master himself, not one of his followers, created the painting in two stages starting around 1645, the Times reports. Saul and David will now be the centerpiece of an exhibition focusing on the investigation's years of detective work. "The analysis helped us to determine that the painting is in fact made up of 15 different pieces of canvas; three main parts—the Saul, the David, and an insert of a copy of an old painting in the upper right corner plus strips all around the edges," the museum's director tells the AP. "So it's a real patchwork." (Another recent art find: Hitler's long-lost bronze horses.)