Rembrandt painting found in New Jersey basement now in museum

A painting languishing in a New Jersey basement that turned out to be one of Dutch master Rembrandt's earliest works goes on display today at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California as a key part of an exhibit on the 17th century artist. "The Unconscious Patient (An Allegory of the Sense of Smell)" depicts two men wafting a rag under the nose of a third man who is swooning and is dated 1624, the museum said in a press release. The 22-by-18-cm work is among a series of five paintings on the senses that Rembrandt created as a teenager, and will be displayed with two others - hearing and touch - from Wednesday until Aug. 28, when the exhibit will travel internationally. The painting's slog from a New Jersey basement to the upper echelons of the art world began in July when adult children cleaning out their family home in Essex County after their parents died contacted John Nye, owner of Nye and Co auction house in Bloomfield, New Jersey. "The picture was remarkably unremarkable," Nye said, recalling the oil painting was flaking. "It looked like a dark, discolored portrait of three people, one of whom is passed out." When the painting went up for auction in September, Nye estimated...