Restored Rembrandt self-portrait sold to Las Vegas tycoon for record £6.9m

A painting identified as a Rembrandt self-portrait in January this year after being buried under layers of overpainting for more than 350 years was bought by a Las Vegas casino magnate yesterday for a record £6.9m.

Stephen Wynn, 60, one of the biggest art collectors in America, bid for the painting by telephone at the Sotheby's auction in London yesterday. He has said he intends to put the masterpiece on display in the gambling city.

The £6,949,600 price, which includes the buyer's premium, was the highest paid at auction for a self-portrait by the Dutch painter, a Sotheby's spokeswoman said.

She described the atmosphere in the Bond Street sales room as "tense but exciting" during the bidding war between Wynn and another art collector.

Rembrandt painted the self-portrait, which shows him wearing a beret and a coat with a fur trimmed collar in 1634, when he was 28 but within a few years his style changed considerably. Experts believe he had the work restyled to make it saleable. At the time images of imaginary male or female figures wearing exotic costumes were popular in Holland so the portrait was overpainted to give Rembrandt long curly hair, pearl earrings, and a swashbuckling moustache. The additions included a Russian hat trimmed with jewels and a gold chain and a fur mantle decorated with two gold chains. The portrait was restored under the supervision of Professor Ernst van de Wetering, the leader of the Rembrandt Research Project, which authenticates Rembrandt paintings. The group was asked by a private collector to investigate the piece in 1994. Although the portrait resembled the artist and bore his signature, researchers first ruled out that it could be genuine. It took them six years to remove the layers of added paint with a scalpel. The painting was identified as a Rembrandt self-portrait this year by art researchers in the Netherlands.

Experts believe it had been painted over by a student in Rembrandt's studio to make the subject appear to be a Russian aristocrat.