Masters of Morality
Wise lessons from the City Palace
16 april - 4 september
Construction started on the Royal Palace as Amsterdam’s Town Hall in 1648. Originally, the rooms of the Palace were the domain of burgomasters, council members, magistrates and many others. In their offices, they had paintings above the mantelpieces by famous and less well-known master painters.
Mantelpiece paintings
These ‘mantelpiece paintings’ were not just for decoration. Every story – whether from the Bible or Greek or Roman antiquity – provides a wise lesson in how a public servant should behave.
In Masters of Morality, the mantelpiece paintings are brought to life in animations.
Food for thought
The wise lessons in the mantelpiece paintings focus on life in the seventeenth century, but they also provide food for thought for us today. We asked twelve individuals, including Job Cohen, Frans Bauduin and Guity Mohebbi, to apply their expertise and background to thinking about questions that arise from four of the mantelpiece paintings. You can watch their interviews in the galleries.
