From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection
To celebrate Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary, H’ART Museum in Amsterdam is hosting From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Featuring 75 works by 27 artists, this exhibition is the largest display of The Leiden Collection ever shown publicly in the Netherlands. The works on view include over a dozen astounding paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn and the only painting by Johannes Vermeer in private hands.
Organized thematically, the exhibition offers a glimpse into 17th-century Dutch life. People take center stage, as seen in portraits and character studies capturing the social aspirations and individuality of the era’s citizens. Also on view are engaging depictions of everyday activities: market vendors selling their wares, soldiers playing cards, youths engrossed in books, and women writing letters or playing music. Religious and mythological subjects, commonly shown in private homes, reveal the period’s spiritual and intellectual pursuits.
At the heart of the exhibition is Rembrandt, with works in the exhibition spanning all periods of his career. Complementing these paintings are others by Amsterdam artists intimately connected to him, including his teacher Pieter Lastman and pupils Ferdinand Bol, Govaert Flinck, and Arent de Gelder, among others.
Beyond Amsterdam, the exhibition highlights portraits, genre scenes, and historical subjects by artists from Leiden. The exhibition features seminal pictures by Rembrandt’s friend and rival Jan Lievens, his student Gerrit Dou, and artists painting in Dou’s fijnschilder tradition, such as Frans van Mieris the Elder and Godefridus Schalcken. Also represented are masters working in other Dutch cities, including Hendrick ter Brugghen, Frans Hals, Gerard ter Borch, Caspar Netscher, and, of course, Johannes Vermeer.
From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection is curated by Elizabeth Nogrady, The Leiden Collection, and Birgit Boelens, H’ART Museum. Advised by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., The Leiden Collection.
