The first western scholar to discuss the painting was Wilhelm von Bode who in his History of Dutch Painting (1883) stated that it was a Rembrandt dating from his "late" period, that is, 1654.
But Bruyn's remained a minority opinion, the suggestion of Drost's authorship is now generally rejected, and the Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of".