Analysis of the wood panel, style, changes made to the details while the work was being painted, the signature applied while the painting was still wet and the overall high quality confirm that it was an autograph work by Rembrandt himself, painted when he was 27 years old and had just moved to Amsterdam.
Think Claude Monet and Paris or Edward Hopper and New York. Those artists never stopped creating scenes that captured the vibrancy-and sometimes the more grotesque side too-of places that remain world capitals today. They both left legacies for others to follow, as one can see wandering around Montmartre or Central Park, spying the many artists with sketch books in hand or seated at easels.