Room for art, in 17th-century Antwerp
Mauritshuis, The Hague, THE NETHERLANDS
25 March-27 June 2010
The exhibition will focus on a unique genre of painting: cabinet pictures known as ‘kunstkamers’. This genre originated in Antwerp, and the paintings depict rooms filled to the brim with artworks, like tiny fanciful museums. Three works by Willem van Haecht (1593-1637), one of the genre’s most important founders, will form the core of the exhibition Room for Art. This is the first time all three known paintings by the master, from the Mauritshuis, the Rubens House and a private collection, will be shown together. Alongside Van Haecht’s exceptional paintings, the exhibition will also include masterpieces from other international museums and private collections. Together, the sixteen works in the exhibition offer an unrivalled survey of seventeenth-century Antwerp’s fascinating art world. (…more at Mauritshuis website…)