Exhibition Rembrandt, From Darkness to Light

21 March 2026 – 14 June 2026

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For the first time in a hundred years, rare Rembrandt etchings are seeing the light of day. The etchings were safely stored away for a century and forgotten by the world. All this changed when Charlotte Meyer, the owner and collector of the etchings, inherited the unique art collection from her grandfather and discovered the etchings in a vault. The etchings are now on view in the Netherlands for the very first time! Meyer singled out the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen as the first museum in the Netherlands to exhibit them.

Meyer is now researching and expanding the collection with enormous dedication. Her love of collecting has led to the collection growing to over seventy Rembrandt etchings. Additionally, Meyer collects works by Rembrandt’s sources of inspiration, contemporaries, and followers. These pieces are also on view in the exhibition. This situates the master within the context of his time and makes his oeuvre even more luminous. Special etchings from the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen and Museum Henriette Polak complete the exhibition.

Rembrandt was a moving storyteller, a courageous innovator, and the creator of an unsurpassed oeuvre. He was a talented artist whose work has fascinated and inspired the public for more than four centuries. During his lifetime, his etchings were already extremely coveted. He intensively explored the relatively new medium, capturing everyday and dramatic stories, portraits, and landscapes in a lively interplay of lines. He mastered the technique like no other. For his thrilling game of light and darkness (chiaroscuro), Rembrandt pushed the technical possibilities of the etching technique to its very limits.

His own life was turbulent too, marked by extreme highs and lows. Success and prosperity were followed by economic demise. At a young age, he mourned the loss of three of his children, as well as his wife Saskia.

His rich artistic life came to a bitter end, and Rembrandt was buried anonymously.

Rembrandt’s influence was enormous and brought about a change in the general artistic tastes of the time: instead of idealised representations of the past, the focus shifted to an unvarnished, realistic image of the world in all its violence, desire, faith, and poverty. In line with the depiction of this raw reality, this exhibition also provides space for the other side of Rembrandt: his unpolished side. Not just the inaccessible genius, but also Rembrandt the human being, with all his quirks and flaws.

The exhibition sheds light on important moments in Rembrandt’s life: his younger years, his period of flourishing, his grief, and his poverty. Interactive elements let you discover first-hand how the etching technique functions. Let yourself be guided to seventeenth-century Amsterdam through scents and images and experience Rembrandt’s world – up close and with all your senses.

BIJ de Bieb and the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen are collaborating on the intercultural storytelling project Verhaal verlicht (Illuminated Story). Under the guidance of initiators and writing teachers Dorine Berkhout and Lieke Deelstra, inhabitants of Zutphen from all over the world wrote their life story. The stories were collected in a book and can be read and heard in the library from 26 March. The Rembrandt etchings were used for inspiration.

The Stedelijk Museum Zutphen’s collaborative spirit continues with Aventus Zutphen. Students of the Fashion Design and Fashion Tailor programmes have integrated elements from the Rembrandt etchings into their fashion designs.