Abstract
Why are the attributions and quality judgments of some authors accepted in the literature, while the opinions of others meet with contempt or even mockery? Max Lautner in Wer ist Rembrandt? (1891) challenged the attribution of nearly all paintings then given to Rembrandt, and assigned them to his follower Ferdinand Bol. John C. Van Dyke in Rembrandt and His School (1923) asserted that only 48 Rembrandt paintings in public collections were actually authentic, and that the hundreds of other works given to him were by students, followers, and imitators. The critical reception of these books serves as examples of the policing of art history as a scholarly discipline. These cases also illuminate the fact that connoisseurship has not merely been subjective, but also a highly personal process, embedded in specific social contexts and practiced in ways that make questionable claims for scholarly objectivity.
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