Most surviving pages carry no name. After an issue spent celebrating credits, honesty requires the other half: attribution is an argument, not a fact, and the argument often ends in a shrug.

That is not a defect in the painting on your wall. “Hand unknown” is the most common label in this whole tradition, and it puts your painting in the company of most of the corpus. When a guest asks, the honest sentence is also the more interesting one: nobody knows who painted this — here is how experts would begin to argue about it. The way an ear is drawn. The transition from cheek to jaw. The confidence of the line under the colour.

Say attributed to when scholarship leans one way; say workshop of when only the circle is clear; enjoy the mystery when nothing is. The painting was made by somebody with a name. Not knowing it is not the end of the story — it is the invitation.