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Rembrandt's Wedding Portraits

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On Monday morning November 2, I was listening to a lecture by Mary Bouquet on “Researching collections, museums and heritage”. In respect of the museum collections and the obtainment of them, she mentioned a pair of 17th century paintings by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Apparently the Dutch government was trying to buy them for 160 million euros. Later on, at the end of the lecture, a student from the audience asked the exact same question that also had been wandering my mind; is it justifiable for a government to pay such a huge amount of money for an artwork? It seemed that Mrs Bouquet had a hard time answering that question on the spot. She did eventually not really come to a conclusion. Therefore, I decided to further investigate upon this topic. Throughout my essay I will analyse why this duo of paintings is so desired and will identify the arguments in favour of and against buying it for so much money.

The two paintings, also know as Rembrandt’s Wedding Portraits are two life-sized paintings of a Dutch couple called Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit. They were painted in 1634 in Amsterdam, in the early years of Rembrandt’s career. More than a century later in 1877 they were sold to the French baron Gustave de Rothschild, who took them to his home in France. …show more content…

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