Meet Jan Steen as you probably didn’t know him before. This seventeenth century Dutch artist is mainly known as the painter of jolly and somewhat chaotic scenes from daily life – there is even a proverb in Dutch that refers to this, the ‘Jan Steen household’. But the artist also depicted entirely different subjects: paintings showing stories from the Bible, classical mythology, and history. A prime example is Moses and the Pharaoh’s Crown at the Mauritshuis. These are stories filled with excitement, drama, and passion. Through a selection of roughly twenty paintings, the exhibition shows that Steen was a versatile and ambitious artist, with considerable literary knowledge and a keen eye for the comical aspects of each story.

From the museum's website, 3 October 2017