The misattribution that hung for a century

A painting can lie for a century without anyone touching it. It only has to keep its label.

Museums correct attributions more often than their gift shops admit. A canvas enters the record under a famous name, the name outlives the evidence, and three generations of visitors stand in front of a workshop copy believing they are looking at the master's own hand. When the correction finally comes, it arrives quietly: a catalogue footnote, a changed wall text, a new line in the institution's collection database.

That database line is the part we care about.

What the record keeps

Every plate this house prints is tied to a named work in a named institution's own public record: the artist, the date, the accession number. When an attribution shifts, the record shifts, and our catalogue follows the record — not the legend, not the label the painting wore longest.

• The institution's collection entry is the source, linked from every piece.
• A work whose attribution is disputed is described as disputed.
• A correction in the record reaches our catalogue as a correction, in the open.

The excitement of the old masters is not that every question is settled. It is that the questions are real, the stakes are centuries deep, and the answers — when they come — are written down where anyone can check them.

The journal exists for those answers. When a record moves, you will read it here first.