ABOUT THE LEIDEN COLLECTION

Founded by Thomas S. Kaplan and Daphne Recanati Kaplan, The Leiden Collection is comprised of more than 250 paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. The Collection features rarities by some of the greatest artistic innovators of the seventeenth century, including Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, and Jan Steen, along with their peers, competitors, and followers. Named for Rembrandt’s birthplace, The Leiden Collection features eleven Rembrandt paintings and two drawings that span his career, including three of his earliest known works from the series “Allegory of the Senses.” In addition to the works by Rembrandt, the Collection encompasses the broadest range of masterworks of his many pupils, including Carel Fabritius, Ferdinand Bol, Govert Flinck, Gerrit Dou, Aert de Gelder, Jan Lievens (Rembrandt’s studio mate) and Pieter Lastman (Rembrandt’s and Lievens’s mutual teacher). 

The Leiden Collection holds one of the largest and most extensive representations of Rembrandt and the Rembrandt School in private hands; the number of Rembrandts in the Collection matches or exceeds those of all but a few national museums. By focusing on portraits, history paintings, and genre scenes, the artwork in the Collection brings the everyday world of the 1600s to life. Since its creation, The Leiden Collection has prided itself on sharing its artworks with museums across the globe for long-term loans and special exhibitions and, in doing so, has become the art world’s singular “lending library” of seventeenth-century art. In early 2017, The Leiden Collection debuted its online scholarly catalogue, www.theleidencollection.com, which provides an overview of the collection and scholarly essays and entries of its paintings and drawings.