Information from the museum website
For the first time, the exhibition Dutch Painters in the Prado brings together a sizeable group of the most important Dutch paintings in the Museum’s collection. It is presented in conjunction with the publication of the first catalogue of this collection, which is largely unknown to the wider public and which offers a counterpoint to the pictorial tradition of the Spanish school. The works in question cover all the genres typically found in Dutch art: marine views, winter landscapes, genre scenes, still lifes and portraits.
The principal work within this group is Rembrandt’s canvas that has now been identified as Judith at Holofernes’ Banquet. This is one of the great masterpieces in the Museum’s collection as well as the only unanimously accepted work by Rembrandt in a Spanish collection. The exhibition also offers the rare chance to see a group of the large landscapes with hermits’ retreats and other bucolic scenes commissioned in Rome by Philip IV for the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid. Painted by Herman van Swanevelt and Jan Both, they are considered to be among the earliest examples of modern landscape.