History of Art

The complete overview of the historical crossbow collection of the Royal Netherlands Army Museum includes a history of the development of this popular weapon and richly illustrated descriptions of individual objects, ranging from medieval to early twentieth century European crossbow types.

Few Gothic churches in the world today retain stained glass in all windows. St. John’s Church in Gouda is one of them. All its windows contain stained glass, known as the “Stained-Glass Windows of Gouda”.

This study centres on three of the earliest works of the 17th-century Rotterdam painter Cornelis Saftleven (1608-1681). It concerns one drawing, and a pair of small paintings which have to date remained anonymous, but which can be attributed with certainty.

Most studies of Indian armor have concentrated on Mughal arms from northern India, and there has been no serious study of Hindu arms since the nineteenth century. Robert Elgood seeks to fill this scholarly gap with Hindu Arms and Ritual, a new and richly illustrated study that examines pieces from the Tanjore Palace Armory in south India.

Some of Rembrandt's most significant works are portrayals of female figures. These images encompass a wide range of figures: mythological heroines, the mother of Christ or the women he lived with, such as his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh and Hendrickje Stoffels; there are portraits of women from wealthy Amsterdam, alongside poverty stricken street vendors or nude models. These portrayals reflect Rembrandt's intense dialogue with pictorial tradition, the cultural and social climate in the seventeenth-century Netherlands and his highly individual image of the feminine.

The klewang is the most famous - some would say infamous - sword known by every Dutchman with only a basic interest in colonial history. It was originally developed for use by anti-guerrilla units in the region of Aceh on Sumatra in the former Netherlands East Indies.