Time, Death and Vanity

Almost four hundred years after it was made, David Bailly's Vanitas still life with portrait of a young painter continues to fascinate art historians. The masterpiece raises all sorts of questions. Is it a self-portrait? To what do the various objects in the painting refer? And who is the mysterious female figure appearing against the back wall?
Despite this work appearing familiar to many people, the painter is hardly known to the general public. In the exhibition David Bailly - Time, Death and Vanity, you can discover unknown master painter.
In recent years, curators of Museum De Lakenhal worked together with experts from Leiden University and the Rijksmuseum, among others. In this research, they mapped Bailly's oeuvre for the first time, tracked down unknown portraits of his and discovered hidden faces under the paint layers of his masterpiece.
This exhibition brings together 90 works including portraits and vanitas representations by David Bailly, and work by contemporaries such as Dou, Lievens and Rembrandt.