It all started in 1804 when a captain of the Napoleonic armies, a native of the village, Xavier Dufour, acquired the painting, without an apparent signature, at an auction in Dunkirk before donating it to the parish the following year. A century later, the work became the property of the municipality during the separation of Church and State. It was classified as a Historic Monument in 1918 but was not authenticated until 1959 when a restoration at the Louvre unearthed the illustrious signature: RHL, for Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden. In 2011, it was loaned to the Louvre for the exhibition “Rembrandt and the figure of Christ”.
For decades, it was exhibited to the eyes of sometimes distant visitors, sometimes in a simple wooden cupboard, then in a display case, but “without any kind of high security”. “Anyone could have nicked him”, summarizes the mayor Claude Lagarde. A Rembrandt neither in a museum nor with a collector but in a town, “it’s very rare”, assures Aude Claret. The work “is associated with the village, so it is very important that it returns to where it has been since the 19th century”.