Amsterdam Rijksmuseum reopened, Rembrandt and owl

This 4 April 2013 AFP video is about Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum reopening after renovation.

As this blog mentioned earlier, after ten years of being, mostly, closed down, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has re-opened.

The museum is best known for its collection of seventeenth century Dutch painters.

But it has other artistic and non-artistic objects from Dutch history as well.

When the museum was built in the nineteenth century, painters added several murals depicting historical events, as they saw them. These murals had disappeared, but have been restored now.

The (mobile phone) photos here are from a visit to the museum on 12 August 2013.

This picture depicts Jan van Schaffelaar, according to tradition, a lower nobility mercenary warlord. He is said to have served the bishop of Utrecht, David of Burgundy, in a civil war against the Utrecht city bourgeoisie and some of the regional nobles. In 1482, Van Schaffelaar and his troops supposedly occupied the church tower of Barneveld village. His civil war enemies then besieged the tower. Van Schaffelaar is then said to have jumped off the tower, sacrificing his life for the lives of his men. The picture shows, behind van Schaffelaar, the flag of the bishop of Utrecht. We don’t know how much of this story is legend and how much is truth.

There is more art in the Rijksmuseum collection with Van Schaffelaar as its subject.

In this picture, a count of Holland, William III, called William the Good, convicts the bailiff of Kennemerland region in the northern part of his county, for dishonest treatment of a farmer. Other versions of this legend are not about the bailiff of Kennemerland, but about the bailiff of southern Holland. The story figures in a book about “pseudo-history”.

Not only the museum walls, also the floors have pictures. Like this bat.

And this eagle owl.

Another bird. Not on a nineteenth century floor, but on a seventeenth century painting. Jan Asselijn shows a swan, fiercely defending its nest against a dog. Later, this painting was interpreted as symbolic for Dutch republican politician Johan de Witt, murdered horribly in 1672 by pro-monarchists.

The most famous object of the Rijksmuseum, of course, is still the Night Watch by Rembrandt, in the central hall of the building. The photos show two details of the painting.

Finally, two woollen hats. Worn originally by Dutch sailors under explorer Willem Barentsz., when they had to winter on the Russian Arctic island Novaya Zemlya, as an 1596-1597 attempt to sail to South Asia by circumnavigating northern Asia failed.