Ships on a stormy sea, painted over a fragmentary portrait of a young man (c. 1655-60 for the portrait, c. 1685-90 for the seascape), attributed to Isaak Luttichuys and Ludolf Backhuysen. Courtesy of Dickinson.
A less fearsome but equally compelling artifact resembled a 17th-century digital collage—an inadvertent artist collaboration. It began as a portrait of a young man by Isaak Luttichuys (c. 1655–60), later overpainted with a stormy seascape attributed to Ludolf Backhuysen (c. 1685–90). Rather than fully obscuring the figure, the second artist let the young man’s face emerge eerily from the waves. Eventually, the portrait was painted over entirely, and by the 1950s, it was sold as a pure seascape. Only recent cleaning revealed the original face, confirming it was no accidental palimpsest but an intentional, possibly satirical, intervention. “It’s a very strange oddity,” said William Bayliss of Dickinson in London, who can trace its provenance back 150 years.
