Mystery Rembrandt buyer revealed: Leiden Collection pays $9 million for “Saint John on Patmos”

The buyer of one of the most mysterious Rembrandt paintings to come to market in recent years has finally been revealed. As The Art Newspaper reports, Thomas Kaplan, the New York businessman and owner of the Leiden Collection, bought “Saint John on Patmos” (c. 1661) at Sotheby’s London auction last December for 6.75 million pounds, about $9 million. With this purchase, his collection now numbers eighteen paintings by the Dutch master — a personal record sealing Kaplan as the world’s largest Rembrandt collector.

The painting’s history is nearly as fascinating as the work itself. Last publicly exhibited in 1923, it was known to scholars mainly through an old, poor-quality black-and-white photograph. In 1904, an American dealer sold it for just $160, attributing it to Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt’s pupil. Only in 1913 did art historian and then Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Wilhelm Valentiner recognize it as an authentic Rembrandt, buying it for his personal collection for $525, convinced the model was Titus, the artist’s son.

But the real twist came just before the 2025 auction. Cleaning and technical analysis revealed two previously almost invisible elements in the dark background: a palm tree and an eagle. As CODART explains, the eagle is the traditional emblem of Saint John, while the palm and landscape reinforce the scene’s identification with the island of Patmos — where, per Christian tradition, the Apocalypse was written. The painting was thus identified not as a simple portrait of Titus but as Saint John on Patmos; specialists nonetheless strongly believe Rembrandt really did use his son’s face as the model for the biblical figure.

The work’s provenance stretches back to 1760, when it appeared in the sale of Gerard Hoet II’s collection in The Hague. In 1926 it was bought by German industrialist Friedrich Thyssen; the canvas was seized during the Nazi period in 1940 and returned to the Thyssen family in 1950, remaining with its descendants until the 2025 sale. The Art Newspaper recalls that two months after the purchase, in February, Kaplan sold a Rembrandt drawing, “Young Lion Resting”, for nearly $18 million, directing the proceeds into a fund for the wildlife protection organization Panthera. Of the “Saint John on Patmos” purchase, he says it is about “preserving and returning to the public domain a stunning late masterpiece, hidden from view for more than a century” — and the work will travel with the Leiden Collection’s world tour.