‘Maternal exhibit’ in birthplace Leiden opens Rembrandt Year

LEIDEN - Official commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the birth of famed Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn recently began with the opening of an exhibit in Leiden’s Museum De Lakenhal. ‘Rembrandt’s Mother, Myth and Reality’ displays 42 paintings and etchings and drawings, presumably with his family members as models. In all likeliness however, few of the people depicted actually were Rembrandt’s kin, unless so recorded by the master himself, as was the case with portraits of his wives and children. Three of the seventeen major Rembrandt exhibits during 2006 will be mounted in Leiden where he was born in 1606. The artist moved to Amsterdam in 1631. The Dutch capital will mount the majority of the Rembrandt exhibits.