Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels

This scene shows Archduke Leopold Wilhelm walking through his art gallery in Brussels, accompanied by friends and by the painter himself, David Teniers the Younger, who holds his hat in his hand and listens to his patron as the archduke points with his cane toward some recent acquisitions. The paintings hang in rows across the walls of an L-shaped room, while others lean against chairs in the foreground, as if waiting to be examined. In the background, a doorway with a sculpted portrait of the archduke reinforces the idea of the collection as a space of personal display. Teniers made several versions of these gallery views, and this one appears to be later than larger ones that documented the collection. Its interest lies mainly in what it reveals: an overall view of how a seventeenth-century collector arranged and showed his works, and the painter's role as go-between between patron and the wider public who would come to know those pieces through engravings.

Painter

David Teniers the Younger

Date

1650

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

74 × 88 cm

Museum

Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid

Genre

interior view

Depicts

Lady with a Fan, Toilet of Venus, Judith with the head of Holofernes, Still-life with Peeled Lemon, Susanna and the Elders, Blind Leading the Blind, Hercules, Deianira and the Centaur Nessus, Holy Family with St. John and Mary Magdalene

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