Amsterdamsters, 4: At The Rijksmuseum

All day rain was forecast Sunday, so, like everyone else here, we elected to spend it at the national museum. They have finally completed all the renovations underway on our last few visits to the Rijksmuseum, and it was a bit disorienting to see everything in its proper place. All the biggies now are on the main grand hall--improving tour bus traffic immensely, one assumes--but one has to be really dedicated to track down that one obscure Avercamp or de Smooch he/she has come to Amsterdam to see. Whatever. I have posted about the Rijksmuseum before, probably more than once, and most of the biggies can be seen at http://roadeveron.blogspot.nl/2012/07/rijksmuseum-i.html. For the present longish post I will focus on some of the lesser works and on some of the lesser intricacies of art history and criticism.

The Medieval/Renaissance collection starts right next to
the bathrooms/lockers, so we started there...above, what
would normally be called a Tree of Jesse is here,
apparently, a Column of Jesse; rock hard...

In this massacre of something or other scene, art historian Vicki notes that Mary 
Janes  evidently were popular in 15th century Dutch painting 

Smirking Madonna..."I'm the Queen of Heaven! I'm the Queen
of Heaven!"

A polychrome carving of the the Marriage at Cana or the Dinner at Emmaus or
whatever...note that the earthly Jesus, in an unusual depiction, is here wearing a
hat

One of the Weepers, little sculptures some queen or other had
made and arrayed around her tomb; each of the Weepers was
one of her children; Rebecca, Rachel, note

Muy importante...enlarge and study...this is the first European painting
depicting the Encounter--Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest 
of America, Jan Mostaert, 1555

In the Hall of Model Ships...a whole fleet of masterpieces

In the Hall of Doll Houses, Vicki studies...

The nursery...two sets of twins! One for the wet nurse, one for
the dry nurse...

I never, ever, pass up a Claude Lorrain

Now we are in the Grand Hall of the Biggies, I mean, of Honor, watching other
people mostly

OK, so you're one of the city's rich and powerful and you and your club engage 
this painter to do a group portrait, the whole point of which is for you and your 
friends to be able to recognize yourselves and point and say, Yup, that's me, way 
back in 1642; only the painter guy is really more interested in action, emotion, 
brushwork, light and shadow...it was years after The Night Watch before Rembrandt 
received another portrait commission

Men in black

In the Vermeer room, off the Grand Hall; our favorite, the woman reading the letter
(with the map), was on loan in New York (a former Dutch colony)

The Grand Hall of Honor

So I am marveling at this over-sized Massacre of the Innocents, and especially its
Caravaggio-style composition, featuring, um, male buttocks, when Vicki notes...

That we are in fact  in the Caravaggio room (sorry, it's a running gag)

Fishing for Souls...Protestant-style on the left, Catholic- on the right

A favorite Avercamp winter scene, favorite in part for its Breughelesque
scope and realism (details on request)

And thus ended another great day at one of the world's great museums; back out
into the rain...