Rijksmuseum X-Radiographs online

7 april 2016

The Rijksmuseum keeps a large collection of X-radiographs of not only paintings from their own collection, but also of paintings from other institutions. A large part of these X-ray films were produced during the great Rembrandt exhibition, which was held at the Rijksmuseum and the museum Boijmans van Beuningen (then Museum Boymans) in 1956.

Thanks to the collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, X-radiographs of paintings from the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Gemäldegaleries in Berlin, Dresden and Kassel were added to The Rembrandt Database.

The Rijksmuseum has been very generous in sharing their data. More X-radiographs from the Rijksmuseum of paintings from other collections will be presented in the Rembrandt Database in stages over the course of the project.

X-radiography: X-ray film, detail (front), 18 June 1956, (record number 19381); Rembrandt, Bust of a young woman smiling possibly Saskia van Uylenburgh, dated 1633, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden - Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, inv./cat. no. 1556