Two Museums

The Rijksmuseum Is Open

Earlier this month, we spent some days in Amsterdam and Istanbul, finding time to see a couple big museums. Both visits not only exposed us to great collections, but enhanced our appreciations for the two cities.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

While this grand art museum has been mostly closed for renovations since 2003, an impressive highlights show is open in its eastern wing. Its focuses is the Dutch Golden Age, which began with the country's independence from Spain in 1648. A large canvas done that year by Bartholomeus Van Der Helst that records a celebration of that historic event is the show's stunning opener. We see a gathering of Amsterdam's civic guards, a wealthy group also captured in Rembrandt's famous "Night Watch," the show's final painting and most famous treasure. I actually prefer the Van Der Helst for its more relaxed style. Its gang of well-dressed men are seated at tables, drinking, eating, smoking and talking. By contrast, Rembrandt's painting is murky and awkward, with all but three of its figures enshrouded by darkness, and those that aren't, improbably lit as if by strobe light.

Paintings document the expansion of empire. A 1665 portrait shows a high ranking merchant with the Dutch East India Company proudly posed with his half-Japanese wife and family and several of their 50-some slaves in their villa somewhere in Asia. Another painting from that year shows an aerial view of a plantation in Begal, India, that produced cotton and saltpetre, a.k.a. potasium nitrate, a key ingredient in gunpowder.

All this money from the colonial enterprises helped buy some beautiful trinkets. One room shows off several amazing doll houses, including one nearly big enough to climb inside. Another has a cabinet with real porcelain -- tiny dishes that were custom made in Japan. Another room is full of Delftware, the wildly popular blue-and-white Chinese-style earthenware made in Holland. Dutch-born William of Orange, who became King of England in 1689, and his English wife Mary II accumulated absurd quantities, with piles of the stuff filling up their manors. Evidence of this can be seen in Delft busts of the royal couple. But more fun are the Delft violin, shoe and giant, pagoda-like flower holder (you better believe it held tulips).

Of course the main attraction is the paintings. As you'd expect, Rembrandt gets a good bit of real estate. My favorite is the exquisite "Portrait of Maria Trip" from 1639, which really brings this homely woman and her richly intricate lace collar to life. Her wan smile recalls Mona Lisa. Two formal portraits by Van Der Helst give a chuckle. One shows a stern father in conservative black, another his son, an obese youth decked out in foppish finery, his petulant gaze meeting ours. Then there are the Vermeers; sadly one of the museum's three was out on loan. Bewitching and utterly beautiful, the two we saw employ the classic Vermeer gambit of using light from a window to illuminate a woman in the middle of doing something -- in one, pouring milk, in the other, reading a letter. My favorite painters, however, were Jan Steen and Frans Hals, both who like to depict people smiling and having a good time. Such is the case with Hals' "The Merry Drinker" (1628-30), a portrait of a rosy cheeked man hoisting his beer, and Steen's "The Merry Family," although we're told the latter was both entertainment and a moral lesson against the dangers of unruly children. I like the merriment, the impishness, the domestic warmth.

We also explored the museum's small annex space in the Schiphol Airport, which features an interesting temporary exhibition (closing Oct. 13) devoted to books in Dutch painting. Twenty or so works are paired with the books seen in their compositions.

Archeology Museum, Istanbul

We were at the Archeology Museum sometime near its 9:00 a.m. opening, giving us a little less than four hours before we had to meet our friends at the Grand Bazaar. This made things a bit rushed. This museum is huge, with more than a million objects. Inside the main building are dozens of galleries of Greek and Roman statues, busts, friezes, etc. -- a collection that easily overshadows the Met in New York, and is probably only rivaled by museums in Italy and Greece. And, unlike the nearby Topkapi Palace, which is overrun by the cruise-ship hordes, the Archeology Museum is nearly empty. It's just you and the whole pantheon of gods, goddesses, nymphs, not to mention emperors. Athena, Hermaphroditus (with both boy and girl parts, natch), Sappho, Marcus Aurelius, Augustus, Oceanus. Oh, and there's a relief depicting Gigantomachy, the battle between the gods and the giants.

The most stunning object in the museum's collection is Alexander's Sarcophagus, which doesn't contain Alexander the Great (it's thought to have contained a Persian nobleman), but rather shows Alexander and the Macedonians in battle with the Persians, with incredibly detailed relief carving, memorably including a lion taking a bite out of a horse. The huge marble object dates from the 4th Century B.C. and remains in pristine condition, with even some of its original coloration still visible; as with much Classical statuary, it was once covered in bright pigments.

The big take-away from all the Greek and Roman (and Cypriot) objects is that these civilizations flourished in Anatolia, on the Adriatic coast of modern-day Turkey. While some of these objects were scooped up by archeological teams, including the Brits, much remains in Turkey.

During our visit, the museum was showing two temporary exhibits, one on the excavation of the Temple of Artemis, completed around 550 BC in present-day Turkey and considered one of the ancient wonders of the world, and, more engrossing, "In the Light of Day: 8,000 Years of Istanbul," a show featuring objects, including a sunken boat, uncovered during recent digs for the city's train and subway tunnels and stations.

The Archeology Museum includes two ancillary buildings, one devoted objects of the Ottoman era, and the other to those of the ancient near east. The former, built as part of the Topkapi palace complex features vibrant Iznik tile. The latter has some of the incredible Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon dating to 576 B.C., some of which you can also see at the Met in New York.