Ruth Leon recommends…Then and Now – Rijksmuseum
UncategorizedThen and Now – Rijksmuseum
If you’ve ever visited Venice you will remember the canals, the palazzos, the light which makes Venice so instantly recognizable from the paintings of Canaletto. But, as we often discover when we try to match the familiar architecture and watery scenes to the famous paintings, Canaletto didn’t actually paint what he saw. In almost every case he altered his composition to fit his vision of Venice. He adapted the view to the perspective of his painting. Rarely, if ever, does a Canaletto painting completely conform to what your eyes are telling you when you look down the Grand Canal.
The Dutch are different. You can go to almost any Dutch town and observe in front of you exactly what you can see in the great paintings and drawings in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. To prove the point, the Museum’s fabulous video department has a new series – Then and Now – which contrast the paintings and photographs of the same places as they are now. Check it out. And if you want to see more, with landmarks clearly indicated, click on the little circle in each landmark.
Somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to demonstrate what was and what is and the results are both beautiful and fascinating.
Rijksmuseum, one of my favourites in Europa!
Each time I visited it I just entered a small number of rooms, as I sticked hours in awe in front of few paintings.
One needs more lives to admire the content of Rijksmuseum!
So true.
What you see in the picture is not Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam but the Vrijthof square in Maastricht with Sint Servaas basiliek (catholic) and, the red one, Sint Janskerk (protestant)…
Yes that is certainly not the Museumplein that is shown above. I wondered what it was.
It’s a fantastic museum. In April I went with a Dutch group to see the spectacular Vermeer exhibition. It’s also very close to the Van Gogh museum so you can kill two birds with one stone.