Ruth Leon recommends… Ambition – Rijksmuseum

Ambition – Rijksmuseum

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Here is another of these wonderful films about the paintings in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. This one, narrated by Matthias Ubl,  Curator of Early Netherlandish and German Paintings, is about those portraits we have seen by the great Dutch artists of those rich business men and their wives, the pillars of their 15th and 16th century society, the wealthy urban elite who could afford to commission a painter to represent them and their lives, and the wonderful artworks that resulted.

We would have forgotten the subjects of these works – they were merchants, bankers and other worthies – important in their time but not historically noteworthy, but for these extraordinarily detailed examinations of their faces, clothes, and backgrounds which give us such a clear picture of their personalities and those things in their lives they wanted the artist to include in their portraits.
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This, the painters are telling us across the centuries, is what these people wanted us to know about them, about their domestic and professional lives, about the things they are proudest of. This section of the exhibition is called Ambition. Looking at the paintings of these self-confident people, we can see why.

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