Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt

“Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt” was a major travelling exhibition organised jointly by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Detroit Institute of Arts, in association with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It focused on seventeenth-century Dutch history painting, the category that contemporary theory ranked above all others, embracing biblical, mythological, allegorical, and ancient historical subjects. Detroit was the first stop on the tour, presenting the exhibition from February to April 1980 before it moved on to Washington (November 1980 to January 1981) and Amsterdam (May to July 1981). The show brought together more than a hundred works and was accompanied by a substantial scholarly catalogue edited by Albert Blankert, with contributions from Christopher Brown, Beatrijs Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij, Eric Jan Sluijter, and Christian and Astrid Tümpel.

The exhibition made a deliberate argument against the bias of twentieth-century taste, which had long elevated Dutch genre and landscape painting while leaving the grander figurative tradition in relative obscurity. By assembling large-scale mythological canvases, altarpieces, and allegorical works alongside the better-known names of the period, the organisers aimed to restore the reputations of artists such as Abraham Bloemaert, Pieter de Grebber, and Jan van Bijlert, who had been overshadowed by the international appetite for the intimate domestic scenes associated with Rembrandt’s circle.

Vermeer’s “Diana and Her Companions,” lent by the Mauritshuis in The Hague, was included as the sole work by Vermeer. It appeared as catalogue number 54 and was accepted by the catalogue authors as an authentic early Vermeer, situating it within the Utrecht Caravaggist tradition that informed Dutch history painters of the 1650s. The painting is Vermeer’s only surviving work on a mythological subject, and its inclusion in this context helped consolidate its place in his early oeuvre at a time when the attribution was still debated in some quarters.