CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Bonnefanten op Schiphol: Brueghel in business

Bonnefanten at Schiphol: Brueghel in business Exhibition: 28 October 2009 - 22 February 2010

From the Bonnefantenmuseum website, 12 January 2009

Copying popular paintings was a general and accepted practice in the Netherlands from the end of the fifteenth century. From the mid-sixteenth century, the serial production of paintings really took off and several painters, particularly in Antwerp, devoted themselves solely to this practice. The oeuvre of Pieter Brueghel the Younger is a model example of large-scale atelier production, in which many of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s compositions were copied. Over the Christmas period, some versions of two appropriate compositions – the Census at Bethlehem and the small Adoration in the snow – will be shown by the Bonnefantenmuseum in Rijksmuseum op Schiphol.