among the original copper plates owned by Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam is this one for the 1636 etching The Return of the Prodigal Son.
Image: Remi Mathis via Wikimedia Commons
The copper plates produced by Rembrandt have become part of printmaking legend. Reworked and reused time and again during his life, they were subject to further changes as the demand for Old Master prints increased in later epochs. So, what happened to Rembrandt’s original copper plates?
Intriguingly, when Rembrandt’s house and chattels were auctioned in the late 1650s to pay his spiralling debts, his copper plates and etching tools were not included. It may have been that he had already sold them or that his creditors allowed him to keep them as the ‘tools of his trade’.