Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria was one of the most famous collectors of the 17th century who collected works by European artists. The collection is based on paintings by Dutch and Venetian masters. The Dutch artist David Teniers the Younger helped the Archduke organize his works, and the result of their joint work was the catalog Theatrum Pictorium ("Theatre of Painting"), published in the 1660s. In addition, the painter has created several impressive works depicting the gallery. Most of them were written in 1651 and have the same name - "Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his art gallery in Brussels."
The first work is in the Prado National Museum (Madrid). The owner of the gallery shows the collection to his friends, while the artist depicted himself near the table, where he examines the engravings. In the center there is a door, behind which there is another hall of the gallery.
The following work is kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The characters are the same, but the gallery is presented from a different angle. Almost all the canvases hang on the walls, and the Archduke removed several of them to show the guests. He points with his cane at one of the paintings - "Portrait of a Man with a Book" by the Venetian Renaissance artist Vincenzo Catena.
Another image of the collection can be seen at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. The artist shows his patron one of the engravings that were supposed to appear on the pages of the Theatrum Pictorium catalogue. The canvases on the wall are the first paintings selected for the catalogue.
The latest work is in a private collection. It is known that it was once kept in the Rothschild family. The picture is dated 1653, and here we see among the characters all the same main characters of the story - the Archduke and David Teniers the Younger. Despite the abundance of paintings depicted on each canvas, this is by no means the entire collection. The Archduke kept more than 1,300 paintings, and only 243 of them were included in the catalog.
