Istanbul, Turkey – For the first time, the Rijksmuseum is organising an exhibition on the Dutch Golden Age in Turkey, including five paintings by Rembrandt and ‘The love letter’ by Vermeer. Over 100 masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum collection will be on display in Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul until June 10th. The exhibition is part of the festivities marking 400 years of diplomatic relations between Turkey and the Netherlands. Today Sabanci University Sakip Sabanci Museum presents a versatile and world class museological environment with its rich permanent collection, the comprehensive temporary exhibitions that it hosts, its conservation units, model educational programs and the various concerts, conferences and seminars held there.
The exhibition showcases the rich and varied nature of 17th-century Dutch art and history, telling the story of the power and majesty of the young Dutch Republic in the Golden Age through a selection of 111 paintings, drawings, prints and applied art in the form of carpets, ceramics, silverware and glassware. The exhibits include landscapes by Jan van Goyen, Jacob van Ruisdael and Aelbert Cuyp, still lives by Pieter Claesz and Adriaen Coorte, genre pieces by Gerard ter Borch, Gabriël Metsu and Pieter de Hooch, and jocular scenes by Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade. Two portraits by Frans Hals will also be on display, alongside several cityscapes by Gerrit Berckheyde and two pen paintings by Willem van de Velde de Oude. The highlights of the exhibition are The Love Letter (1669-1670) by Johannes Vermeer and no fewer than five paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn : Portrait of Haesje van Cleyburgh (1634), Still life with peacocks (c. 1639) and Portrait of Dr Ephraïm Bueno (1645-47), The music lesson (1626) and Joseph recounting his dreams (1633). While the Rijksmuseum is being rennovated, it will be taking the opportunity to share its collection with as wide an audience as possible, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Countries where works from the Rijksmuseum’s collection have been on display include Australia (2005), Japan (2005, 2007), the United States (2006), China (2007), Canada (2009), France (2009), Luxembourg (2010) and Qatar (2011). The exhibition in Istanbul will be the final exhibition abroad before the Rijksmuseum’s main building reopens in all its glory in 2013.
Sabanci University’s Sakip Sabanci Museum is located in Emirgan, at one of Istanbul’s oldest settlements on the Bosphorus. In 1927 Prince Mehmed Ali Hasan of the Egyptian Hidiv family commissioned the Italian architect Edouard De Nari to construct a villa, now the museum’s main building, and it was used as a summer house for many years by various members of the Hidiv family, briefly also serving as the Montenegran Embassy. After the mansion was purchased in 1950 by industrialist Haci Ömer Sabanci from Prince Iffet, a member of the Hidiv family, it came to be known as “Atli Kösk” (The Horse Mansion), because of the statue of a horse (purchased in the same year) by French sculptor Louis Doumas that was installed in the garden. A second horse sculpture on the grounds of Atli Kösk is the cast of one of the four horses taken from Sultanahmet square in Istanbul when it was looted by Crusaders during the fourth Crusade in 1204 and removed to the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. After the death of Haci Ömer Sabanci in 1966 Atli Kösk began to be used permanently as a home by Sakip Sabanci, the eldest of the family, and for many years housed Sakip Sabanci’s rich collection of calligraphy and paintings. In 1998, together with its collection and furnishings, the mansion was allocated to Sabanci University to be transformed into a museum. With the addition of a modern gallery annex, the exhibition areas of the museum opened to visitors in 2002, with a further extension completed in 2005. Today Sabanci University Sakip Sabanci Museum presents a versatile and world class museological environment with its rich permanent collection, the comprehensive temporary exhibitions that it hosts, its conservation units, model educational programs and the various concerts, conferences and seminars held there. Visit the museum’s website at … http://muze.sabanciuniv.edu