Mauritshuis, 2

Continuing our visit to The Hague's Mauritshuis...

Johannes Moreelse, Democritus, The Laughing Philosopher, 1630; hmmm...
maybe I should look him up in Wikipedia

A great van Ruisdale...View of Harlem, with Bleaching Grounds, 1670

Gimme a Big Head, Rene Sance, 1713

At this point I was getting undisciplined again, failing to shoot the labels...but this is
a version of Jan Steen's great "As the old do, the young copy" (my lousy paraphrase)...
in which the old indeed are misbehaving, and in which the young follow...

Mitigated somewhat by the fact that the father, here teaching his son to smoke, is
Steen himself; is there a Steen museum?

A more serious Steen, The Life of Man, 1665

Hals' Laughing Boy, 1625

Hals' portraits of Jacob Olycan and of Aletta Hannemans; a
wedding portrait, I think...separately, just in case

One of the really great Steens, Girl Eating Oysters, 1658;
oysters are an aphrodisiac, you understand

Carel Fabritius' The Goldfinch, 1654; another book come out
of the Mauritshuis

Vermeer before he was Vermeer...Diana and Her Nymphs, 1654

And now we are in the unimaginably priceless department... Vermeer's View of 
Delft, 1660, said by some to be the finest of Dutch landscapes...

And, The Girl...unlike in San Francisco, you could stand 
right next to her and marvel...not  my favorite painting, not 
even my favorite Vermeer, but pretty incredible in any case