The Mauritshuis remembers only too well when extensive renovations to the museum made it impossible to display the collection in house. Between 2012 and 2014 the Mauritshuis collection went on tour at home and abroad. Currently Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts is closed for renovations until 2019. This has afforded the Mauritshuis a unique opportunity to organise three exhibitions featuring works of art from this museum’s world-famous collection.
Exhibitions 2017
Steen & Jordaens: As the Old Sing…
11 July 2017- 14 January 2018
Two portrayals of the proverb ‘As the old sing, so pipe the young’ will grace the walls of the Mauritshuis starting in July. Jan Steen’s large picture from the collection of the Mauritshuis will be joined by a painting by Jacob Jordaens, on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. This will be a wonderful opportunity to compare these two humorous paintings and compare how two different artists tackled the same subject.
Neighbours
Portraits from Flanders 1400-1700
7 September 2017 – 14 January 2018
In the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium), the art of portrait painting came into full bloom during the period from 1400 to 1700. During these three centuries, noblemen and wealthy citizens had themselves immortalised by the best Flemish artists of their time. These portraits remain very impressive due to the outstanding way in which the sitters’ facial features and the character were memorialised in paint.
During the autumn of 2017, the Mauritshuis will tell the story of Flemish portraiture using a selection of the best Flemish portraits from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp (KMSKA), including major works by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Pieter Pourbus, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. These portraits will be presented here together for the first time, along with complements from the Mauritshuis collection and a portrait of Jacob Jordaens from the Rijksmuseum. Remarkably, almost all the sitters can be identified. This is why the exhibition will not only highlight what makes Flemish portraits so special, but also who appears in the pictures and how they wanted to be viewed. The striking portrait of Abraham Grapheus by the Antwerp-based portrait painter Cornelis de Vos has been restored specially for this exhibition, and will be on view it in its refreshed state for the first time. The Mauritshuis is the only venue for this exhibition, which is a collaboration with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp (KMSKA), closed for renovations until 2019.
Antonello at the Gallery
9 November 2017 – 7 January 2018
This fall, an exceptional masterpiece will once again be on display in the Prince William V Gallery at the Buitenhof in The Hague. Following presentations of Caravaggio, Titian, Velázquez and Mantegna the fifteenth-century Italian painter Antonello da Messina (1430-1479), will be featured this year. This Sicilian Renaissance artist is remarkable, because he was inspired by his Flemish contemporaries. The painting, Calvary, is a loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.
The Prince William V Gallery showcases an international masterpiece every autumn. These works are drawn from international collections and comprise paintings by masters seldom or ever exhibited in the Netherlands. Other works in this series of masterpieces include Boy Bitten by a Lizard by Caravaggio from the National Gallery in London, Venus Rising from the Sea (The Birth of Venus) by Titian from the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, Portrait of Don Diego de Acedo by Diego Velázquez from the Prado in Madrid and last year’s showpiece Ecce Homo by Andrea Mantegna from the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. The masterpiece will be presented from 9 November 2017 through 7 January 2018.
Sponsors
The ‘Steen & Jordaens’ and ‘Neighbours: Portraits from Flanders’ exhibitions were realised with the help of Friends of the Mauritshuis Museum, the BankGiro Lottery and a donation from the estate of the late G.A. den Hartog. ‘Antonello in the Gallery’ has partly been realised with the aid of the Johan Maurits Compagnie Foundation.
