From the museum website, 2 September 2009
This selection from the permanent collection explores the cultural and social roles attached to the art of painting during the 1500s and 1600s. Some of these works show the ambition to compete with established arts like poetry, others the desire to serve the Church or the layperson in the religious turmoil of the Reformation. Still others aimed to supply the steady market for genres like portraiture, which despite their aesthetic achievements still had to contend with the former status of painters as artisans, or “daubers”.