There are many good reasons to visit the Hague.
It's the center of government for the Netherlands and home to the royal family, a city of great
variety, ranging from the old typical historic Dutch buildings to the ultramodern skyscrapers.
A lovely attraction of the Hague is the large pedestrian zone right in the heart of town,
many lanes just for people lined with shops, restaurants, cafés and beautiful historic
old buildings.
But, curiously, the main reason that many people come to visit the Hague is because
of one girl and is not even a girl.
It's a painting of a girl.
Maybe you know what I'm getting at.
It's the famous Girl with the Pearl Earring, a masterpiece by Vermeer.
We'll be showing you a lot more of the many attractions of this beautiful city in our
series.
Look for them in our collection.
But in this video we are focusing on the great museum in which you can find the Girl with
the Pearl Earring.
Mauritshuis one is of the major art museums of the Netherlands.
While it is most famous for that painting, it contains many other great works of art
including two other world-famous masterpieces that we will soon show you.
It is located next to the Binnenhof Palace complex in the heart of town, an area that
we'll be showing you all a lot more of in our main movie on the Hague.
Originally, constructed between 1633 and 1644, it was the mansion of Count John Maurice who
was Holland’s wealthy Governor of Brazil, and he spared no expense to make his house
beautiful, a fine example of Dutch classicist architecture.
Rembrandt and Vermeer are the heroes of the collection, which also contains other masterpieces
by Jan Steen, Franz Hall, Jacob van Ruisdael, Holbein and many others.
But most visitors want to head directly to see that young lady, and she will not disappoint.
Thanks to the historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier and the movie made from it,
starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth, the Girl with the Pearl Earring is one of
the most famous paintings on the planet.
She is so appealing that we want to bring her home with us, or at least capture her
in a photograph, or put yourself in the frame.
Vermeer's other most famous work here in the museum is his View of Delft which has exerted
a powerful influence on the entire domain of landscape painting.
Only 30 paintings by Vermeer have survived, and three of them are here in the Mauritshuis,
including Diana and her Nymphs depicting the hunting goddess in a dreamy atmosphere.
The museum features many paintings of domestic household situations such as this raucous
family by Jan Steen.
The beautiful gallery rooms certainly enhance your appreciation of the paintings.
One of the most popular pictures in the collection is the famous Bull by Paulus Potter.
It's worthy of some close examination – it's so large that it contains a lot to discover.
It too was carried off to the Louvre by the French and it was considered then the fourth
most important painting in that collection.
The enormous bull has for companions a cow, a sheep and lamb, a ram and a shepherd.
Despite this large size, he paid great attention to the smallest details with a vast meadow
stretching away to the dim horizon where buildings of a town are barely visible.
A bird soars with outspread wings in the broad expanse of sky.
The cow's face is marvelous with eyes, nose and mouth riveting the viewer's attention.
You can almost smell the grass-laden breath of the animal.
While the Bull is Potter's largest and most famous painting, he created many other fine
paintings of animals which were his favorite subject, such as the Cattle in a Meadow.
Among the 16 Rembrandts the most outstanding work is The Anatomy Lesson, representing Dr.
Nicholas Tulp, who is lecturing to seven physicians about the arm of a dead man that has just
been cut open at the wrist.
It's the painting that made Rembrandt famous.
He was only 26 years old, barely settled in Amsterdam and had painted only a few pictures
of note when the celebrated anatomist commissioned the work for the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons
in 1632.
Rembrandt excelled at capturing the light falling on a face to create that feeling of
three-dimensionality, including a large number of self-portraits.
Rembrandts biblical portrait of King Saul and Young David was challenged as a fake.
But after careful studies, was decided this is an original Rembrandt.
One of the most curious and interesting pictures in the museum is the Interior of a Picture
Gallery, painted by several different Antwerp artists, displaying miniatures on the wall
of actual famous paintings, created in the 1670s on a very large canvas 7 feet wide.
The Mauritshuis is open every day and if you want to avoid the busiest times try come in
the afternoon after 3 o'clock.
It opens at 10 AM and closes at 6 PM, except Monday, opens at 1 PM.
It's also open later on Thursday evenings.
They have an excellent website and a free app in which you can browse the collection
and read many descriptions of the paintings, and you could purchase your admission ticket
online through the website.
This large oil painting the Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man was a joint collaboration
between Rubens and Jan Bruegel the Elder, who frequently worked together, showing Eve
taking the fruit from that sinister serpent.
By now you have very clearly seen that there is a lot more to the Morris house gallery
than the Girl with the Pearl Earring.
That's perfectly okay if you were lured in by that one painting, but be sure to spend
the time to see the entire collection, easily done in a couple of hours.
In 1820 the museum we see today was officially opened after the Dutch state purchased the
mansion and installed the Royal Picture Gallery consisting of collections made mostly by the
Princes of the House of Orange.
A few years ago the museum completed major renovations that nearly doubled the exhibit
size, so it's in really good shape now.
There are not usually so many police out front of the museum, but this was a very special
day, apparently the one day of the year the museum is closed.
So I had to come back the next day to get into the museum.
But I did stick around on this special day to enjoy the festivities, in which the king
rides in a parade to Parliament where he delivers a major speech setting out the main features
of government policy and budget for the coming parliamentary session.
We'll show you that parade in a separate movie.
We've got many more movies about the Netherlands look for them in our collection.
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