CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Narodni Muzej

National Museum

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The collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters, consisting of around 120 works of art, is an important section of the collection of the National Museum of Serbia. It was built up over a relatively brief period of time, in a little more than a century after the museum was founded in 1844. 

The earliest dated work of Netherlandish art in the collection is a painting by Juan de Flandes depicting the Sermon of St. John the Baptist, which was once part of the Miraflores altarpiece.

The Man with the Rosary attributed to Joos van Cleve, The Temptation of St. Anthony by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, and Paradise probably by Maerten de Vos, are other major examples of sixteenth-century Flemish art.

Outstanding examples of seventeenth-century Flemish painting include Diana Returning from the Hunt, created in Rubens’s studio in collaboration with Frans Snyders, Flowers by Jan Brueghel the Elder, dated 1616, and a work on copperplate The Battle of Lekkerbeetje after 1600 by Sebastiaen Vrancx. Seventeenth-century Dutch art is represented by numerous landscapes, including most notably Dutch Landscape by Jan van Goyen, in addition to which the scene of everyday life depicted in Dutch Village by Joost Cornelisz Droochloot is a perfect example of this artist’s work. As for still lifes, the collection has two “sumptuous” still lifes (pronkstillevens) by Abraham van Beijeren, as well as several large paintings such as The Game Seller by Adriaen van Utrecht – a skilfully executed combination of a still life and genre scene.

The latest dated works are Girl with a Dog by Carel de Moor and Flute Lesson by Adriaen van der Werff. The hunting scene Still Life with Game by Adriaen de Grijef is characteristic of work produced in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

The Print Room of the National Museum was established in 1925. It possesses some 500 Dutch and Flemish works – mainly prints, with only a few drawings. The earliest prints are by sixteenth-century artists including Lucas van Leyden, Jan Saedeler, Hendrick Goltzius, and their contemporaries. The most famous seventeenth-century masters represented in the collection are Adriaen van Ostade, Jan van de Velde and Jan Both, while the museum also possesses work by the eighteenth-century artists Jacob Folkema and Emmanuel J.N. Ghendt.

Jelena Dergenc, Curator of The World Collection and Dr. Dragana Kovačić, Senior Curator of the Collection of Prints and Drawings by Foreign Artists (March 2024)

Related CODART publications

Jelena Dergenc, “Dutch and Flemish Painting in the National Museum of Serbia”, CODARTfeatures, February 2023.

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