The Amsterdam Museum has found temporary shelter on the Amstel, while the historic Burgerweeshuis is being renovated. Despite the move, the museum remains a stage for the city’s stories. This episode shows that the museum is also active internationally: the Städel Museum in Frankfurt features an exhibition about Rembrandt’s Amsterdam, for which the Amsterdam Museum lent no fewer than sixty objects.
We walk behind curator Norbert Middelkoop through the large format depot of the Amsterdam Museum. Between mirrors and rolled up carpets we draw our attention to a huge painting with a prominent role for Napoleon. Napoleon’s entry looks remarkably fresh. “That’s right,” says Middelkoop, “it was restored not so long ago. People may have seen it in the Riflemen’s Gallery of the Amsterdam Museum.”
With the Burgerweeshuis temporarily closed for a thorough renovation, the depot is fuller than ever. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt gratefully takes advantage of this for its exhibition Rembrandt’s Amsterdam. Golden Times? No fewer than sixty objects from the collection will travel to Germany.
Copper Monday
One of the masterpieces is the painting Copper Monday by Adriaen van Nieulandt. KoppertjesMonday was the third Monday after Epiphany (January 6), the only day on which lepers were allowed into the city to raise money for the Leprozenhuis. The city was off-limits to them for the rest of the year. The painting shows the last journey of the lepers in 1604. Van Nieulandt only made this work years later, in 1633, on behalf of the Leprozenhuis, where it was originally placed. “So it’s basically a flashback.”
“This painting is very special,” explains conservator Norbert Middelkoop. “If you look at seventeenth-century Dutch cityscapes, you usually see a fairly tidy city: little dirt on the street, happy people, well-to-do middle classes, elite, people on horseback or in a carriage. Here we see a cross-section of the Amsterdam population. the Dam.”
Restoration
“All paintings are first checked for condition,” says Middelkoop. “Whether it can handle the journey. It may be that, on the advice of a restorer, you have to refrain from borrowing it. Even within Amsterdam.”
KoppertjesMonday can travel, but must first be extensively restored. For restorer Kathrin Kirsch it is clear what she has to do: “Cleaning, removing varnish, removing old retouches and then at some point you have to rebuild it.”
It will be a job that will take months. After the renovation of the Burgerweeshuis, KoppertjesMonday will undoubtedly have an important place in the new Amsterdam Museum.
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