The Museum of Fine Arts’ Director Malcolm Rogers recently showed me around the new 17th-century Dutch and Flemish gallery, which takes visitors back into the Golden Age of painting.
The gallery has seven portraits by Rembrandt, including the famous “Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh,” a delicate depiction of old age on loan from Marblehead residents Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo, who in the past have let the Peabody Essex Museum use their collection, too. There are a total of about 30 landscapes, still lifes, portraits and decorative objects by the Dutch masters.
“I love to see the juxtaposition,” Rogers said, “because they’re all produced in the same countries, at about the same time.” “It tells you something about society and the culture of the time.”