Built for nobility and now home to royals, this palace has a checkered past. It held art, then political prisoners.
Location City: The Hague
Virtue, or vice? This seated woman is an icon of domesticity, but the man’s money may tempt her away from work.
Judith Leyster, The Proposition
Go on, judge a book by its sound. The thinner the parchment, the higher the pitch—and the price.
Listening to the medieval book
This 1000-year-old math primer is nothing fancy, but it took months for a scribe to make.
A medieval textbook
This enigmatic character study was dubbed the “Dutch Mona Lisa.” The turban and pearl add a touch of the exotic.
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring
70 percent of this landscape is sky. The church orients us, but weather adds specificity and dynamism.
Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with ...
With its animation and naturalism, this canvas launched Rembrandt’s career as a portrait painter.
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