The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and the Mauritshuis in The Hague are simultaneously exchanging 25 outstanding works from their permanent collections thanks to a collaborative agreement between the two institutions. In Madrid, an exceptional group of seventeenth-century Dutch masterpieces is being presented, including Johannes Vermeer’s View of Delft (ca. 1660-1661). These works are brought together in a new exhibition space within the museum, the so-called Classical Galleries, located near the galleries dedicated to the Dutch school, thus offering a more comprehensive view of this extraordinary and prolific century.Â
The permanent collections of both institutions are of very different origins. While the Thyssen Museum traces its roots to private collections, the Mauritshuis’s collection comes from the estates of the Stadtholders and the House of Orange-Nassau. These differences are also reflected in their approaches, as they focus, in one case, on Dutch Golden Age painting and, in the other, on a broad overview of Western painting, diverse in schools and chronologies.
The works included in the Madrid exhibition span a chronological arc from around 1618 to 1705, and are by artists such as Ambrosius Bosschaert I, Frans Hals, Hendrick Avercamp, Pieter Claesz, Rembrandt van Rijn, Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen, Jacob Ruisdael, Pieter de Hooch, and Nicolaes Maes, among others. The paintings are presented thematically: the first room is dedicated to still lifes and genre paintings; the second to landscapes and compositions with figures; and the third displays, on its own, one of the greatest landscape paintings of all time: Vermeer’s View of Delft .Â
In addition, three paintings from the museum’s collection have been selected and are exhibited alongside three others from the Mauritshuis. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s The Garden of Eden is displayed next to The Garden of Paradise by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens; The Merry Violinist with a Glass of Wine is paired with The Violist , both by Gerard van Honthorst, and The Western Façade of St. Mary’s Church in Utrecht , by Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, complements the exterior view of the temple depicted in the panel by the same artist belonging to the Mauritshuis.