Information
The Olomouc Museum of Art with its branches – The Archdiocesan Museum Olomouc and Archdiocesan Museum Kroměříž – manages several collections of various owners. Dutch and Flemish paintings are best represented in the museum’s own collection and the collection belonging to the Archbishopric of Olomouc. The paintings are divided between two galleries. The first is in the Archdiocesan Museum Olomouc and the second is at the Archbishop’s Chateau in Kroměříž.
The history of the collection of the Olomouc Museum of Art starts in the years after 1951 when the Museum was established and the collection of the Archibishopric of Olomouc – from its largest and most valuable part – from the year 1673 when bishop Karl von Lichtenstein-Castelcorno purchased a painting cabinet of Franz and Bernhardt von Imstenraedts. Among the most important paintings are works by Quinten Massijs, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Lucas Gassel, Frans Floris, Jan Brueghel the Elder, David Vinckboons, Theodoor van Loon, Frans Francken II and Anthony van Dyck’s outstanding portrait of Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria. In addition, there are also paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists active in Central Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century, such as Jan Thomas van Yperen, Hans de Jode, Reinier Meganck or Jan van Ossenbeeck.
Miroslav Kindl, Head of Old Art Division, Curator of Netherlandish paintings of Olomouc Museum of Art (June 2020)
Collection catalogues
Netherlandish painting of the 16th-18th centuries from Olomouc collections
Machytka, Lubor, Gabriela Elbelova
Olomouc 2000