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 international loan exhibition dedicated to Dutch history painting of the seventeenth century, a genre long overshadowed in popular perception by the Dutch mastery of genre scenes, landscapes, and still lifes. The show opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on 2 November 1980, before travelling to the Detroit Institute of Arts and concluding at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was organized jointly by all three institutions and represented one of the most ambitious collaborative scholarly efforts of its era.

The exhibition argued that Dutch painters of the Golden Age were deeply engaged with subjects drawn from classical mythology, the Bible, and ancient history, and that this engagement occupied a central place in the contemporary hierarchy of artistic ambition. Works by Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, Pieter Lastman, Ferdinand Bol, and Govert Flinck were brought together to demonstrate the range and seriousness with which Dutch painters approached the elevated category of history painting, challenging the long-held assumption that Dutch art was primarily concerned with the faithful observation of everyday life.

Vermeer’s “Diana and Her Companions” (c. 1653–56), lent by the Mauritshuis in The Hague, was among the most striking loans in the exhibition. One of his very few mythological works, it dates from early in his career, before he developed the domestic interior subjects for which he is celebrated. The painting shows Diana attended by nymphs in a quiet, nocturnal setting, with one figure gently removing a thorn from the goddess’s foot. Rather than the dramatic Baroque mythological action typical of the period, Vermeer chose a moment of intimate repose, already suggesting the contemplative stillness that would define his mature work.