Cobbler by Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam,

Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam?
The auction house labelled this oil on canvas as a Victorian genre painting. The back of the painting showed several repair patches. When I removed the painting from its frame, I found the picture was lined in the Victorian period, and since that early restoration the painting had suffered more injuries.
Anyway, the original, unlined, canvas had sustained a major trauma. It had a tear from the basket to the cobbler's foot. Nevertheless, someone must have thought a lot of this painting to have gone to so much trouble.
I can only think this was when the heavy-handed over-painting occurred - with a job lot of lead white the artist added dashing highlights and gave the cobbler a cyclist's helmet! The image below is after initial cleaning, and what I thought was a fireplace, emerged from the grime, as a box-bed.

Christie's, London, sold on Wednesday, September 14, 2005, a painting of cobbler in his workshop. The painting is almost identical to mine accept for the colour and the right of the picture is cropped on mine. the auction labelled the painting as a follower of Martin Dichtl 1661-1670 (Germany).