The Female Impact

A lot is known about both Marten and Oopjen from the Rijksmuseum. However, for many other so-called pendant portraits of married couples created in the 17th century, much more is known about the man than about the woman. In the course ‘Women of the Rijksmuseum,’ led by art historian Judith Noorman, students from the UvA […]

The Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum has had no shortage of publicity. Despite the wave of publicity, interesting new insights into Vermeer and his clients have remained underexposed. The Rijksmuseum catalogue claims that Vermeer’s main buyer was not a man, but a woman. As a guest of Stephan Komduur on Radio 1, Judith Noorman explained […]

A unique archival document about the seventeenth-century Northern Netherlands has surfaced in a Belgian family archive. The simple-looking booklet contains a wealth of detailed information about daily life in the seventeenth century as seen through the eyes of one woman: Maria van Nesse. The discovery instantly places Van Nesse among the best-documented people of her […]

In the second episode of Women of the Rijksmuseum, host Cathelijne Blok and curator in training Femke Valkhoff talk about a 17th-century portrait of Maritge Vooght by Frans Hals. It turns out she was quite a famous beer brewer!

For the summer edition of Oud Holland Reviews, Sarah Joan Moran (Utrecht University) gives her take on Gouden vrouwen. This book is the result of a class devised and created by Judith Noorman, on women artists, collectors and patrons in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The book was created in collaboration with her students from that class. […]