The four most visited Old Master exhibitions of 2019 were all dedicated to Dutch and Flemish art. According to The Art Newspaper’s annual Art’s Most Popular, the most popular Old Master exhibition was the Prado´s Miradas afines. Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, which ran from 25 June to 29 September, and was seen by just over 441.665 visitors. The exhibition highlighted issues of national identity in Dutch and Spanish seventeenth-century painting and the historiographic traditions of both countries. Its curator was CODART member Alejandro Vergara.
Second was Rubens and the Birth of the Baroque at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. The exhibition included many international loans and drew 331.302 visitors in early 2019. The award-winning Breugel exhibition, organized by Sabine Pénot, Elke Oberthaler, Manfred Sellink and Ron Spronk at the Kunsthistorisches Museum came in third. It was the most successful exhibition ever hosted by the Viennese museum. Fourth on the list is All the Rembrandts, which the Rijksmuseum organized in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the death of the artist.
The six other exhibitions in the top ten of most visited Old Master exhibitions of 2019 were all on Italian artists. This is in sharp contrast to last year’s list when Italian Old Masters trumped Northern European art.