Seveneenth-century copies of an Early Netherlandish painting uncovered through technical and art historical analysis

Abstract Studies of Early Netherlandish panel paintings have long implemented analytical techniques and methods such as infrared reflectography, dendrochronology, and pigment analysis. Despite this, our understanding of workshop replicas, later copies, and forgeries remains incomplete. Pieter Cristus, active in Bruges between 1445 and 1460, is documented to have produced multiple versions of certain works. His Virgin and Child in an Archway exists in three versions. One is signed and likely authentic, while the other two have sparked debate due to limited technical examination. Hypotheses range from workshop replicas to later copies, or even twentieth-century forgeries. New technical research, supplemented by art historical analysis, has resolved the debate: they are seventeenth-century copies. This discovery highlights an underestimated and understudied phenomenon: the existence of high-quality seventeenth-century copies that use pigments similar to the fifteenth century ones, but which reveal themselves through subtle stylistic differences and the dendrochronological dating of the support.