BARCELONA, SPAIN.- Caixaforum presents “Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens...- Masters of Flemish Painting of the 17th Century in the Collections of the State Hermitage Museum,” on view through February 1, 2004. The exhibition includes works by Rubens, Anton van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Snyders, David Teniers the Younger, Adrian Brouwer, Jasper van der Lanen and Jan Fyt. The exhibition puts together forty-nine works of art by the masters of Flemish painting of the 17th century that belong to the State Hermitage Museum.

The Hermitage’s collection of Flemish painting of the 17th and 18th century is one of the greatest and most valuable in the world and is made up of more than 500 works of art from the period where Flemish painting reached its splendor. This collection includes all the genre and all the currents of the artistic development of this period. The main goal of this exhibition is to show the richness and variety of the collection of the Hermitage through its most important paintings. Most of the paintings in this selection, and specially the works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, Snyders and Teniers, belong to the old collection of the museum that was begun more than 200 years ago, in the period of Illustration, during the reign of empress Catherine II (1762-1796).