Rembrandt painting featuring artist's 'fingerprints' to go on at Sothbey’s

Two fingerprints almost certainly belonging to Rembrandt have been discovered on a small painting portraying Jesus, which is to be auctioned in London next month.

The artwork, called Study of the Head and Clasped Hands of a Young Man as Christ in Prayer, a rapidly painted oil sketch on an oak panel, is coming to the market for the first time in 60 years and is estimated to fetch about £6m.

George Gordon, the co-chair of Sotheby’s old master paintings department, said it was not possible to 100% confirm the fingerprints belonged to Rembrandt because no comparable examples had ever been found. “But the discovery of the marks in the original layer of paint along the lower edge make their connection to the artist highly credible,” he said.

Fingerprints are often found in the varnish of artworks – but the prints on the Rembrandt painting are in the original paint, meaning the artist may have picked up the artwork while it was still wet.

The discovery was made before the painting’s inclusion at the Louvre’s 2011 exhibition Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, which subsequently went to Philadelphia and Detroit. The fingerprint findings were first published last year.