Turning Heads; Bruegel, Rubens and Rembrandt

A comprehensive survey of the tronie, the autonomous head study, tracing the genre from its origins in sixteenth-century Flemish painting through its development in seventeenth-century Dutch art. Curators argued that Pieter Bruegel and Frans Floris pioneered the form, revising the conventional view of the tronie as primarily a Dutch invention, and showed how Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer subsequently developed it. Seventy-eight works from forty-three lenders, with the National Gallery of Art’s Girl with a Red Hat among the centrepieces. The first major exhibition at KMSKA following its extensive renovation; it subsequently traveled to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.