Sponsorship:

Art in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt is supported by grants from the William R. Kenan Jr. Fund for the Arts, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, Mrs. Ruby C. McSwain; the Bell Foundation; Kennedy Covington Lobdell and Hickman, LLP; and the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation.

Catalogue:

Accompanying the exhibition is a 224-page, fully illustrated catalogue by exhibition curator Dennis Weller with additional essays by Cynthia Bogendorf Rupprath and Mariët Westermann, authorities on Dutch and Renaissance Art. For information, call 919.839.6262, ext. 2153.

A small handbook to the Flemish kunstkamer is also available in the Museum's European Galleries and in the Museum Store.

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About the Exhibition

Masterpieces of Flemish Art and the Dutch Golden Age fill the galleries of the North Carolina Museum of Art during the four-exhibition festival Art in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt through Jan. 5, 2003.

Headlining the festival is Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, the first exhibition ever devoted to the Dutch master's career. The Museum has also organized an exhibition of 17th-century Dutch biblical paintings, a related show of Rembrandt etchings focused on biblical themes and the permanent installation of a 17th-century kunstskamer, or "art room," paying homage to a type of kunstkamer found in the home of Peter Paul Rubens.

Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age draws on public museums and private collections in Europe and the U.S. for this first-ever exhibition focused entirely on the artist's work. A follower of Frans Hals and husband of well-known painter Judith Leyster, Molenaer (ca. 1610-1668) created works that rank among the most innovative and humorous in Dutch painting. The exhibition features more than 40 paintings from the late 1620s through the 1660s and includes both Molenaer's better-known works and many little-known paintings.

"Despite a decline in his reputation since his death, Molenaer produced a body of work that far surpassed the efforts of nearly all of his contemporaries," said exhibition curator Dennis P. Weller, the Museum's curator of Northern European art. "His work can be enjoyed on a number of levels. His paintings can be playful and funny, and his subject matter often possesses an earthy, if not even vulgar, humor akin to what today's audiences can find in our own movies, TV shows and ads. But at the same time, Molenaer serves as a centrally important, if under appreciated, figure in the Dutch Golden Age."

This critical reassessment of the Dutch master explores his deft combination of entertaining images and instructive messages; his facility with typical Dutch subjects, from tavern interiors to village weddings to family groups; and his considerable innovation with religious and allegorical scenes. The Museum's own early painting by Molenaer, The Dentist (1629), offers a glimpse at several themes that would become trademarks of his more mature work: a comic episode with lively facial expressions, animated action and an understated religious commentary. In the painting, a fancifully dressed dentist pulls the tooth of a grimacing peasant who grips a rosary in his right hand. The patient's prayers obviously have little effect on the pain he is suffering, and the scene offers a sly religious commentary to Molenaer's Protestant Dutch audience.

Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age continues until Jan. 5, 2003, before beginning a national tour. Support for the exhibition is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Art in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt also features the Virginia Camp Smith Seventeenth-Century Flemish Kunstkamer, a period-style art room celebrating both the fine and the decorative arts. This type of room was popular in Antwerp and elsewhere during this period, and the Museum's kunstkamer, modeled after one found in the home of Peter Paul Rubens, will include a mixture of paintings, sculpture, period furniture, books and decorative objects such as a seven-arm chandelier and a silver Renaissance cup.

Masterpieces by Rubens, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Snyders, Joos de Momper and David Teniers the Younger will be displayed in the kunstkamer, which will also include an Italian bronze sculpture Hercules and Antaeus, an ivory carving of the Crucifixion by an unknown Flemish artist, and other paintings and sculpture from the Museum's permanent collection. The Museum's Ebony Cabinet with Thirteen Paintings of Mythological Subjects, called a kunstcabinet, will be filled with a wide variety of shells and corals in the new art room, emphasizing the traditional inclusion of natural curiosities in 17th-century kunstkamers. The Museum's recent acquisition of a Biblia Sacra, an illustrated Flemish Bible (1657), underscores the importance placed on the printed word and religion during this period.

A fully illustrated 16-page booklet about the project will be available within the kunstkamer. The installation is funded by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation's Old Masters in Context Program. Individual donations and grants from other foundations were used to purchase specific objects included in the room. The kunstkamer will remain on permanent display in the Museum's European Galleries.

The final components of the festival are the exhibitions Dutch Seventeenth-Century Biblical Paintings, drawn largely from the Museum's own collection, and Rembrandt's Etchings of the Bible, featuring 25 works on loan from several North American museums and one private collection.

Works in the former exhibition include paintings from the Museum's permanent collection such as Jan Steen's The Worship of the Golden Calf (ca. 1671–72), Hendrick Ter Brugghen's David Praised by the Israelite Women (1623), Matthias Stom's The Adoration of the Shepherds (ca. 1635–40), and additional works by Govaert Flinck, Jan Lievens, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and a Rembrandt follower perhaps identified as William Drost. Additionally, Claes Moeyaert's Meeting of Jacob and Joseph (1636) will be on loan from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and Aelbert Cuyp's Saint Philip Baptizing the Ethiopian Eunuch (ca. 1639) will be on loan from the Menil Collection in Houston.

The exhibition of Rembrandt etchings also focuses on biblical scenes, including Adam and Eve (1638), Abraham's Sacrifice (1655) and Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves: an oval plate (ca. 1641). Also featured is Rembrandt's Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window (1648).

"Though biblical scenes are not usually associated with the glories of the Dutch Golden Age, many Dutch painters did, in fact, receive commissions for such subjects," said Weller. "The paintings here provide excellent examples of this, and the complementary Rembrandt etchings showcase his genius as a printmaker and the manner in which he brought humanity to religious narrative."

The exhibitions of Dutch biblical paintings and Rembrandt etchings will remain on view through Jan. 5, 2003.

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