The Mauritshuis was built by order of Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679). So it is literally Johan Maurits' house. In a new permanent presentation in one of the rooms of our museum, we will tell, on the basis of eleven works of art, the story about Johan Maurits, Dutch Brazil and the history of the Mauritshuis as a building and museum.
Governor of the colony Dutch Brazil
Johan Maurits was appointed governor of the colony Dutch Brazil by the Dutch West India Company (WIC). The WIC had captured this area in the north-east of Brazil from the Portuguese for its lucrative sugar mills and sugar cane plantations. John Maurits governed the colony from 1636 until 1644 and used his Brazilian income to build his private residence in The Hague.
At the Mauritshuis we previously considered Johan Maurits primarily from an art historical perspective. We focused on how he took artists and scientists with him to Brazil to record the nature and inhabitants there. By exclusively looking at Johan Maurits through an art historical lens, however, we only see a limited part of his story. Because he also played an important role in the transatlantic slave trade – at least 24,000 enslaved Africans were transported to Brazil under his rule.
A new presentation
The artworks in this new presentation – ten paintings and a sculpture – are all from our own collection, but were previously dispersed throughout the building. By bringing these works together in one room on the first floor, you as the visitor are given the opportunity at the start of your visit to the museum to form an image of the man who gave the museum its name and his background. New room texts and a reworked multimedia tour shed light on various aspects of Johan Maurits’s governorship (1636-1644) of Dutch Brazil in the service of the WIC.
We also consider the reality that often seems almost invisible in our paintings: the origin of the sugary treat in a portrait of a young girl; a black boy reduced to an ‘exotic’ accessory to underscore the exaltedness of a white princess.
