Ruth Leon recommends … The Sick Child – Rijksmuseum

The Sick Child – Rijksmuseum
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Friso Lammertse, curator of 17th century Dutch art at Amsterdam’s Rijsmuseum, talks movingly about this painting by one of the lesser known masters in his care, Gabriel Metsu’s The Sick Child. I’m struck by this curator’s personal warmth and sympathy for the mother and child in the painting and by the connection he draws between her despair and the current fear faced by us all in the current health situation.

​Our access to the experts who work with these works of art every day, know them and love them, is for me one of the few advantages of our lockdowns. Under normal circumstances, we can go to the museums, see the paintings, even read about them, but we don’t meet the curators. To hear these art historians talk about their charges with intimacy and knowledge is a tremendous plus. The Rijksmuseum does this particularly well in these very short talks.
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