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The collection of Western European paintings of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (Lietuvos nacionalinis dailės muziejus – LNDM) consists of around 300 works. The paintings date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century and include Dutch and Flemish works as well as others by Italian, Spanish, French, German, and Austrian artists. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Dutch and Flemish paintings were popular among Lithuanian collectors. Most of those in the museum’s collection derive from aristocratic collections of that period, such as that of Count Władysław Tyszkiewicz, or from the private collections of the local intelligentsia. However, the past 200 years have seen constant geopolitical tensions, near-endless wars, and six occupations, which have left their mark on the collections in the Lithuanian museums. Today, the LNDM’s collection of Dutch and Flemish art consists of some 40 paintings. The most important ones are usually exhibited in two Vilnius-based branches of LNDM: the Vilnius Picture Gallery (Vilniaus paveikslų galerija) and the Radvila Palace Museum of Art (Radvilų rūmų dailės muziejus). The latter museum currently has the largest number of exhibits in this collection.
Dutch and Flemish artists from the seventeenth century are well represented in the permanent exhibition at Radvila Palace Museum of Art. Notable highlights include The Seven Works of Mercy, by Frans Francken III, dated 1630, Christ at Emmaus by an unknown Flemish painter (possibly Gerbrand van den Eeckhout) and St. Ursula and the Martyrs by Bartholomeus Spranger, all three of which come from the Tyszkiewicz collection. Two other highlights are The Vegetable and Poultry Shop by Adriaen van Utrecht and Jan Boeckhorst, dated between 1620 and 1650 and The Old Mill by Meindert Hobbema, thought to have been painted in the second half of the seventeenth century. The collection also contains two portraits by Frans Pourbus the Younger, Portrait of a Woman with a Red Ribbon and Portrait of a Woman with a Diadem, dated 1604 and 1614, respectively.
Other Dutch and Flemish artists represented in the LNDM’s collection are Dirck van Bergen, Cornelis Mahu, Johannes Lingelbach, Joannes Fijt, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (or Joachim Wtewael), Hendrik Verschuring, Claes Jansz. van der Willigen, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Pieter van Bloemen, Abraham Hondius, and Melchior d’Hondecoeter.