A personal selection by Wim Pijbes.

Starting on 19 June, a personal selection from the Rijksmuseum Collection chosen by General Director Wim Pijbes will be on display in the Rijksmuseum. Called Director´s Choice, Pijbes uses this exhibition of eight 16th and 17th century portraits by artists including Dirck Barentz, Michiel Sweerts, Karel Dujardin, Paulus Moreelse and Rembrandt van Rijn to demonstrate how painters played with the theme of eye contact.

Someone’s looking at you! It may be from a portrait, for example, that his eyes make contact with you, there’s no escape! His gaze even follows you around. Standing eye to eye with the subject of a portrait is about more than just a gaze following you around the room, however. It is the blurring of the line between being in the painting and standing outside it. There is a demand for your attention as you are pulled into the depiction. The old masters were well aware of this effect, just as advertisers are today.