Who Is That Boy in Fancy Dress?
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 will return to the National Gallery of Art as part of a new series of loan exchanges between the Gallery and the Norton Simon Foundations in Pasadena, California. This loan is the first in a series of exchanges between the two institutions. The boy in the painting has often been identified as Rembrandt’s son, Titus, because his face is rendered in sensitive, intimate detail, as if depicting a beloved family member. Although research suggests otherwise, the painting is still often called Titus. A mysterious animal, perhaps a pet, sits on the boy’s shoulder. Some experts identify it as a parrot, others, a monkey. According to Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., National Gallery of Art curator of northern baroque painting, it may be that the unfinished, cut-down painting is related to an anecdote described by the Dutch theorist Arnold Houbraken in his earl
