The Economic Times reports that an Amsterdam buyer paid between $10,600 and $15,800 in 2021 for 'The Adoration of the Kings,' a tiny 9.6 by 7.3-inch dark, nearly monochromatic painting of the three wise men presenting gifts to the newborn Jesus. At that Christie's sale the work was catalogued as a painting by a close associate of Rembrandt, with an estimate of just €10,000 to €15,000. Two years later, after an 18-month authentication effort, the outlet says experts concluded the piece is by the Dutch master himself, and it went on to sell at auction for £10.9 million — a stunning reversal for a work once treated as minor studio-adjacent material.

Per CNN's Lianne Kolirin, as cited by The Economic Times, the painting's earliest known reference is a 1714 inventory belonging to an Amsterdam collector. It changed hands many times in the early 1800s before vanishing from documented records entirely. The Economic Times notes it reappeared in the 1950s after Dutch collector Johannes Carel Hendrik Heldring acquired it, and at that point prominent art historians actually regarded it as an early Rembrandt — meaning the 2021 attribution to Rembrandt's circle was itself a step down from earlier scholarly opinion.

The Economic Times reports that the 2021 Christie's sale already hinted at the painting's pull: despite a €10,000 to €15,000 estimate, bidding drove it to €860,000, roughly $908,000 — more than 50 times the estimate — as the possibility of a Rembrandt attracted major interest. The eventual £10.9 million auction price shows how dramatically attribution can transform value, a dynamic the outlet compares to Rick Norsigian's $45 garage-sale glass negatives later linked to Ansel Adams. The research, it says, "transformed the understanding" of the small painting, turning a circle attribution into a confirmed masterwork.