Room 24

Look at the way a body turns and the direction from which the light reaches it. Painters in this room used poses and illumination to make a story readable at a glance. Subjects include Lot and his Daughters and Jacob reproaching Laban, alongside a man playing a lute. Artists from the Netherlands travelled to Italy, studied Caravaggio’s pictures and brought ideas home. In Utrecht, some of Abraham Bloemaert’s own pupils helped introduce the newer handling of light they had encountered abroad. Painting biblical and ancient stories still carried prestige, even as the market for landscapes, portraits and daily scenes expanded. The room lets you compare those ambitions in the figures themselves.