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30 of 54 paintings
Brekelenkam painted tailors in their shops many times, as well as depicting weavers, spinners, and seamstresses – all trades which thrived as part of Leiden’s prosperous seventeenth-century textile industry. He repeated the same basic composition of the tailor sitting cross-legged in front of the...
This is a picture of an idealised city square, carefully painted to make sure that the perspectives, proportions and the effects of light and shade make it look as realistic as possible. Dirck van Delen specialised in painting buildings and imaginary architectural views, and the attention to such...
Jan van der Heyden had an outstanding ability to make buildings seem almost photographically real (at least, that’s how we might describe it today). He worked with extraordinary delicacy and precision, taking the trouble to delineate and shade the finest details of stone and brickwork and the pla...
This is a view of the south-east front of the Huis ten Bosch (‘House in the Wood’), which was built just outside The Hague as a summer palace for the wife of the head of state of the Netherlands. The building is shown in its original state, a decade or so after it was finished. Today it is used b...
A small group of people meet to make music and enjoy each other’s company. We look over the back of a chair to see a young woman playing the violin. A second man smiles at the young woman sitting at her ease on the right. Pieter de Hooch has picked out her jewels, but without ostentation: a pearl...
There is mystery in this room. One of the figures has her back to us, so we can’t see the expression on her face. But since the man behind the table seems to be using two clay pipes as a pretend violin and bow, and his companion gestures as though conducting a duet, she may be singing.Scenes left...
At first glance, Caspar Netscher shows two delightful children, both busy. The girl is learning to read while the boy plays with the dog, his toys, including a top, thrown down on the floor.There may be moral in the painting, though it was more likely to have been bought for amusement. In a popul...
An elegantly dressed young woman plays a harpsichord for a man leaning on the instrument. Music is often related to love in Dutch paintings, but in contrast to other genre scenes of this kind the couple don‘t appear to be flirting. The young woman is concentrating on her sheet of music.The Latin...
An atmospheric light, something characteristic of Emanuel de Witte’s many church interiors, falls on the congregation gathered in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk to hear a sermon. De Witte started his career as a figure painter but became a master of this genre, in which architecture and the effects of lig...
In the seventeenth century the Little Ice Age settled over Northern Europe. Rivers and canals in Holland froze over and people took to the ice for work, leisure – and accidents. Hendrik Avercamp, just starting out as an artist, took to it too. His life’s work became the depiction of winter scenes...
Jan Brueghel seems to have squeezed a whole world into his tiny picture. A crowd waits patiently for a turn to come closer to the little child on his mother’s knee. The baby is bare, to show us that he’s a real human baby, but the silvery arrow of light tells us something more.The old man kneelin...
Eleven finely dressed men inspect and discuss the contents of a large room packed with works of art, astronomical instruments and antiques. Their distinctive features suggest that these might be portraits of known artists, connoisseurs, collectors and art dealers – the ‘cognoscenti’ of the painti...
There’s something magical about this enchanting picture, in its unearthly, misty colours, deep shadows and strange beasts. The musician fixing us with an enquiring eye is Orpheus. His story comes from one of the legends told by the Roman poet Ovid in his book Metamorphoses.Orpheus' skill was so g...
In a guardroom that looks more like a Flemish tavern than a prison, a crown of thorns is being placed on Christ’s head. This humiliating moment, recounted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, was one of a number of such episodes in the lead-up to Christ’s crucifixion. Here, the henchmen wear...
This painting is a strange fiction: roses and tulips, lilac and snake’s head lilies, aren't all in bloom at the same time, so the artist would have made drawings and sketches of them at different times of the year, later incorporating them into the picture. Scientific exploration and discovery fl...
Tulips, roses, jonquils, carnations, fritillaries and a single blue iris are massed into a Chinese vase; costly flowers in a costly container. Above them all, Madonna lilies rise like shining white trumpets at the peak of the bouquet, made slightly less regal by the tiny beetle making its way up...
This is a typical example of the small but exquisitely executed still-life paintings which were Adriaen Coorte’s specialism. He used a dark background and dramatic lighting to highlight the contrast between different shapes and surfaces, such as the translucence of ripe gooseberries and the musty...
A tempting pyramid of exotic foods stands out against the dark background of Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s sensuous painting, evoking delectable flavours and scents. At the base, three fleshy oysters curled up in their shells are placed in a triangle, echoing the pyramid form. A single, half-full glass...
Meticulously painted insects, flowers and berries are laid out on a plain creamy white surface without any overlap. Each specimen is carefully observed and identifiable. All of this might give us the idea that we are looking at a scientific illustration, but these insects appear very much alive:...
Insects crawl on and around a spray of creeping thistle and borage flowers, all casually arranged to appear natural. But the creamy white surface is reminiscent of vellum, the prepared animal skin that was used for manuscripts and miniatures, highlighting the artificial nature of this composition...