Rembrandt's Lions: Art and Exile in the Dutch Republic at the Morgan Library and Museum

In the 1630s, North African lions arrived in Amsterdam transported on ships of the Dutch East India Company and were exhibited in local fairground menageries — where they caught the attention of Rembrandt van Rijn, who observed and sketched them, later incorporating the animal figure into works such as "Saint Jerome Reading in an Italian Landscape" (c. 1653). The Morgan Library exhibition starts from this encounter between the artist and an exotic animal, made possible by the same commercial networks that also moved people and ideas around the world in the 17th century, to investigate how distant cultures shaped Rembrandt's universe and work. By tracing the presence of immigrants, exiles, and refugees in his prints, drawings, and paintings — produced at a time when 60% of Amsterdam's residents were born elsewhere — the exhibition proposes a rethinking of the very idea of "Dutch" identity as something constituted by movement and cultural exchange.