Room 26

The god Pan pursues the virginal nymph Syrinx, who flails her arms as she teeters on the edge of the river Ladon, a frog escaping out of her path. She is moments from being transformed by river nymphs into reeds, in answer to her prayers to escape her unwanted suitor. Pan would later use these re...

Gerrit Berckheyde has placed us among the citizens and the most important buildings of his native Haarlem, and a visitor to the market square today would find a view similar to the one in this painting of 1674. The Grote Kerk (Great Church), which is dedicated to Saint Bavo, dominates the composi...

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...

Jan van de Cappelle’s sea is flat calm and luminous – even the few boats that appear to be moving hardly disturb the still reflections. But there’s a sense of drama in the picture, unusual for the artist. Clouds threaten, and a fitful sun breaks through. The barge in the foreground on the right i...

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...

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 bull stands silhouetted against a threatening sky. It seems energised and alert, aware of the presence of the viewer – it makes direct eye contact with us – and of the storm. A strong wind bends the willow trees and a sheet of rain sweeps across the middle distance. Two cows and a pair of sheep...

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...

This sparkling little picture is unusual among Jan Steen’s paintings. We are outside an inn – The White Swan, to judge by its sign – rather than in its dark interior, Steen’s more typical setting.The energetic pose of the man bowling suggests that he’s serious about his game and that, given a mom...

Like many of Adriaen van de Velde’s paintings, this is a quiet picture. The conversation between the milkmaid and the man with the basket seems amicable, with nothing to disturb the rhythmic swish of the milk into the pail. A pig hauls itself up on its haunches, looking as if it will roll over an...

Paintings of life on the frozen waterways of Holland during the Little Ice Age were very popular with collectors at the time. Many artists, usually known for painting rivers or landscapes, produced them, and Adriaen van de Velde was one of the most successful. But in this painting he has concentr...

This is the largest and most elaborate of the pictures by Willem van de Velde the Younger in the National Gallery’s collection. Painted with the artist’s usual accuracy and fine detail, the depiction of a marine occasion fairly common in a seafaring nation like seventeenth-century Holland becomes...