NARRATOR: This interpretation of the myth of the sun god Apollo and the goddess of the dawn Aurora might seem a startling addition to a group of Dutch masterpiece paintings. Consider it in relation to the work directly across this courtyard: Rembrandt’s portrait of Aristotle. Adam Eaker.

ADAM EAKER: On the one hand, you have Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, one of the most canonical and iconic of Dutch paintings in The Met’s collection. And on the other you have this work, Gerard de Lairesse’s Apollo and Aurora, something that normally hangs in our storage.

NARRATOR: Eaker took it out of storage to remind us that Rembrandt was not always the beloved icon he is today.

ADAM EAKER: Visitors may be surprised to learn that de Lairesse was an extremely celebrated figure in his own day, very successful, who really catered to the idealist, classicizing taste that rejected Rembrandt. We see here a very luminous image of two beautiful young deities. It’s an image that reveals de Lairesse’s knowledge of classical antiquity, of Italian painting.

NARRATOR: The subject is taken straight from mythology, but the couple’s faces are individual enough to suggest they were modeled on real people. This may have been commissioned as a wedding portrait of a young couple.

Over the centuries, de Lairesse’s style eventually fell out of favor. His idealism departed from the naturalism prevalent in Dutch art.

ADAM EAKER: Nowadays, we celebrate those Dutch artists who seem to us uniquely Dutch; very local and rooted in their own circumstances. And in that perspective, de Lairesse can seem kind of bland, kind of generic, because he so successfully emulated international currents instead of depicting those uniquely Dutch subject matters or landscapes.