CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Albert Blankert (1940-2022)

Art historian Albert Blankert passed away on 22 November 2022 at the age of 82.

Blankert was an expert on seventeenth-century Dutch painting and a scholar on the work of Rembrandt and Vermeer. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2000 and lectured at Utrecht University until his retirement in 2001.

According to CODART member Friso Lammertse, who collaborated with Albert Blankert on an exhibition, Blankert worked tirelessly to refine the image of seventeenth-century painting and illustrate that there was more to Dutch painting than landscapes, portraits and still lifes. This began as early as 1962 with the groundbreaking exhibition on Italianate landscape painters at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

He had a very important role as initiator, curator and/or catalogue author of important exhibitions such as God en de Goden (1981), Nieuw licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten (1986) and Hollands classicisme in de zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst (1999), in which he brought history painting to the limelight.

These exhibitions (and others), as well as numerous publications made Blankert one of the most prominent, opinionated, talented and influential Dutch art historians of his time. He will be remembered as a great connoisseur with a sharp and witty mind.