Rembrandt’s Orient

West meets East in Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century

Home to the headquarters of the Dutch East and West India Companies, Amsterdam in the 17th century was a bustling merchant city, whose residents came into frequent contact with both people and objects from around the world. Spending most of his career in the Dutch capital, Rembrandt was famously fascinated by foreign cultures. Encompassing his activities both as artist and collector, this exhibition shows how Rembrandt was influenced by new imports, from artefacts to written accounts, arriving from what was then known as the Orient. Works by his contemporaries, meanwhile, offer a wider sense of how Europeans imagined the East in 17th century. Find out more from Kunstmuseum Basel’s website.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here