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Amsterdam's two top museums have joined forces for the first time to bring together the baroque masters of light and passion, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, in an exhibition set to be a highlight of the 400th anniversary celebrations of the Dutch artist.
Opening Friday, the show features some three dozen works from some of the world's great museums in what is billed as a "spectacular encounter between the two undisputed masters" of 17th-century Europe's Catholic south and Protestant north, according to the official website.
The exhibition is hung in the capital's Van Gogh Museum -- dedicated to the 19th century Dutch impressionist who acknowledged an artistic debt to his famous predecessor -- though the heart of it comes from the renowned Rembrandt collection in the nearby Rijksmuseum, which is closed for refurbishing until 2008.
Other major pieces have traveled from museums in Berlin, Melbourne, London and Saint Petersburg to demonstrate -- and counterpoint -- their mastery of a new, powerful realism emerging at the time.
"Its more than an exhibition; it's theater, it's confrontation," said John Leighton, director of the Van Gogh Museum, in a special pre-show presentation Wednesday.
"The show displays two masters of drama," said his counterpart from the Rijksmuseum, Ronald Leeuw.
"Reducing this exhibition to a comparison of the two artists would not do it justice; it's a poetic encounter," he said.
The Italian Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) died four years after the birth of Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). Though they never met in real life, they rose to fame as the supremos of Baroque art.
Caravaggio's dramatic use of light and shadow inspired a spate of Dutch painters whom Rembrandt first encountered making copies during his student years in the central city of Leiden.
Both men were heavily criticized in their day for a disturbing realism that intruded on a world more use to an idealized depiction of religious or human themes.
The chief curator at the Rijksmuseum, Rudolf de Lorm, said simply the two museums "wanted to please the public" by bringing these two Baroque masters together as part of the year-long celebrations in honor of Rembrandt.
"In terms of art history, the exhibition is not ground-breaking, but it is definitely a treat for the eyes," he said of the exhibition, which runs through June 18.
The exhibition comprises 12 pairs of paintings and several isolated works by each artist.
French interior designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte dramatizes the display by setting it in a darkened room, with strong lights highlighting the artworks, hung on matt grey walls.
The museum is also holding an exhibition of some 25 paintings, drawings and letters showing Vincent Van Gogh's discovery of Rembrandt.
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AFPEntertainment-Netherlands-art
AFP 231226 GMT 02 06
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