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| Rijksmuseum. |
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| The museum allows non-flash photography, so who could resist? |
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| We spent most of our time on the second floor, and especially in the large central gallery devoted to the Dutch Masters of the 17th Century Golden Age. Detail from "The Wedding Portrait" by Frans Hals. |
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| The Golden Age of Dutch painting coincided with the frequent commissioning of portraits by groups of public officials, especially various militia, so many of the masterpieces are the 17th Century equivalent of what we would now call official photographs. |
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| Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" holds the place of honor at the end of the gallery. It's size makes it clearly visible as soon as you enter way down at the other end. |
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| The Museum Library. |
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| We were fortunate to be able to visit the Van Gogh Museum as it just reopened on May 1, our last day in Holland, after being closed for extensive renovations. |
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| Van Gogh's body of work is truly amazing by any standard, but the fact that he produced nearly all of it in only ten years staggers the imagination. |
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| We had a print of this on our wall when we were in grad school - what a thrill to see the original. |
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| He occasionally turned to Biblical subjects: The Good Samaritan. |
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| Pieta, with the Christ figure a possible self-portrait. |
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| Wheatfield with Crows" painted during the last month of his life. Plagued by mental instability for much of his life, the great artistic genius died a suicide in 1890 at the age of only 37. |
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| View of Rijksmuseum and Museum Plein from the terrace of the Van Gogh. The plein was a venue for the overflow crowd to watch the royal inauguration on video screens, and that equipment is here being removed. |
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| The visit here was a wonderful way to end our week in Amsterdam, and the next morning we caught our flight back to Minneapolis. |
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