The Metropolitan Museum, like other museums around the world, are planning to “reattribute” several of its Rembrandts. Many scholars feel that de-attribution has gone too far.

When the Metropolitan Museum’s Thomas P. F. Hoving dropped the word recently that the Met was planning to “reattribute” several of its Rembrandts, there was a gasp from museumgoers. Fake Rembrandts at the Metropolitan, of all places? It seemed altogether too shocking to be believed. But art scholars in Rembrandt’s…