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A major beneficiary of this trend was Rembrandt, whom Romantic writers in the early 1800s seized upon as an exemplar of the artist as Prometheus. As the demand for Rembrandts grew, so, mysteriously, did the supply. It is therefore worthwhile to note that several weeks before the Michelangelo and Shakespeare attributions, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, just two blocks north of the house in which the little Cupid stands, came to the end of its "Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt" exhibit. This show reflected the labors of the Rembrandt Research Project, an Amsterdam-based group of experts on Dutch painting that since 1968 has relentlessly whittled down the number of paintings once attributed to Rembrandt (more than 700) by roughly one-half. Galleries and museums that found their prized possessions devalued to forgeries or to works carried out by Rembrandt's assiduous apprentices have not been altogether pleased with the RRP's verdicts. And those who came to see these now discredited paintings may feel a little like the cartoon characters who walk off the edge of a cliff and continue stepping along until they look down. Uh-oh, no support here. Crash!
Well, do we need the ballast of expert opinions and attributions to inform and justify our tastes in art or literature or music or--in the late 20th century--in all the electronic entertainment available at the push of a remote-control button? The snap answer is, hell no, we don't. But that is not really true. Aesthetics, for all the millions of words that have been written on the subject, remains an inexact science. We cannot say why a painting once supposed to be by Rembrandt loses face when its connection with the master is disputed or disproved, even though it looks just the same as it did when we admired it before. Nor can we understand the sudden compulsion to look anew at and find merit in the alleged Michelangelo Cupid and the reputed Shakespeare elegy. For all we supposedly know about it, art remains a mystery to us, forever beckoning, forever withholding its inner secrets. The best we can do is to keep our eyes open, aware that that neglected statue or that neglected poem could, if seen in the right way, blossom into a masterpiece.