For more information please visit www.royalcollection.org.uk
Exhibitions currently running:
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery- This extraordinary exhibition, recently shown at The Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh, is selected from the collections of the Royal Library in collaboration with the distinguished naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough. It brings together the works of four artists and a collector who have shaped our knowledge of the world around us. Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby are diverse figures who shared a passion for enquiry and a fascination with the beautiful and bizarre in nature. All lived at a time when new species were being discovered around the world in ever increasing numbers. Many of the plants and animals represented in the exhibition were then barely known in Europe. Today some are commonplace, while others are extinct. Until 28 September.
Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting- The exhibition brings together over 50 of the Royal Collection’s finest Flemish paintings from the 15th to 17th centuries. The works were produced during the turbulence of the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) and its immediate aftermath, when peace was finally restored to the region. Highlights of the exhibition include masterpieces by Hans Memling, Van Dyck and Teniers and a wonderful group of landscapes by Jan Brueghel and Rubens depicting the blessings of harmony and fertility. Pieter Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents forms a powerful centrepiece to the exhibition. This deceptively beautiful scene of a Flemish village under snow is now regarded as one of the most savage satires in the history of art. From 17 October 2008 - 26 April 2009.