Of the 700 pictures painted by Rembrandt, “3,000 are still in existence”, Wilhelm von Bode, an art historian and curator, once joked. This week there is one more to add to the many copies and imitations. But “The Next Rembrandt”, a portrait of a man in 17th-century dress, is made largely of data. A team of Rembrandt experts, data scientists and engineers fed 346 of the painter’s works into a computer, which used “deep learning” algorithms to extract subject matter, geometric patterns and facial proportions that characterised his paintings. These particulars were synthesised to create a unique new portrait that was then laid down on canvas by a 3D printer, which applied multiple layers of ink to mimic the texture and depth of Rembrandt’s brush-strokes. Given his penchant for self-portraiture, he would surely have approved of the way the result captures his spirit, if not his appearance.