A museum full of animals

You’re looking at an ancient story here: the story of Adam and Eve, the first people on earth. They lived in a beautiful garden that was called the Garden of Eden. It was always good weather there, which meant that Adam and Eve spent the whole day outside and didn’t even need to wear clothes. It was a bit like a never-ending summer holiday.

Adam and Eve didn’t live alone in the Garden of Eden: there were also plenty of animals. These included horses and monkeys, lions and tigers, elephants, dogs, cats and lots of different kinds of birds. There was never any trouble – everyone lived together happily. In this painting you can see just how wonderful it was.

Maurits Mouse lives in a hole in the Golden Room. When the museum is closed, he wanders around the empty building, keeping watch. But the museum isn’t really empty, because Maurits’s friends live in the paintings hanging on the walls. He visits them at night and they go on exciting adventures together. And every year at Christmas we release a special Maurits Mouse video. 

You’ll also come across this little bird at the Mauritshuis. It’s a goldfinch. You can see goldfinches out in the countryside – perhaps you’ve seen one? In the 17th century people also kept goldfinches as pets, because they were pretty to look at and their singing was cheerful and happy. But goldfinches are clever too. You can teach them all kinds of tricks, like lifting up the lid of their feeder or pulling water up from a bowl using a small bucket. But we don’t know if goldfinches themselves enjoy doing this. What do you think?

This particular goldfinch has become very famous. Not for his beautiful singing or because he could do clever tricks. But because Carel Fabritius painted him.

But we also have other birds. Like this bird of prey. It’s been trained to help during hunting and sits on its master’s arm. With this portrait, his master wanted to show everyone: ‘Hey look, I’m chief falconer to the King of England’. Because this was no ordinary job, it was a position of honour.

Curious about what Auke-Florian Hiemstra has to say about this bird? You can listen here.

Among all the animals at the Mauritshuis, you will also find these two tortoises. They come from Brazil, a country in South America. Tortoises don’t live in the wild in the Netherlands. But people do keep them at home, as pets. Or you might see them at the zoo or a children’s farm. And sometimes you even find escaped tortoises in ponds at the park.

In the Netherlands in the 17th century, tortoises were still exotic animals that came from far away. Albert Eckhout saw these two examples when he was living in Brazil for a couple of years. That was where he made this painting. These two rivals aren’t particularly friendly – you can see them baring their teeth at each other. But did the painter get this right? Have a quick listen to this story from the people at Rotterdam Zoo

A young bull stands in a meadow. Lying next to him are a cow and some sheep. There is a croaking frog and some dung flies are buzzing around. And singing high up in the sky is a lark. Paulus Potter painted the animals very truthfully, from the slimmest whisker to the tiniest drop of slobber. And he chose a really large canvas to paint the animals on. The bull that you can see is really huge.

But don’t be fooled! However real this bull may look, Potter didn’t paint a real animal – he made it up! Although he did it very well and very beautifully. To find out how he did it, listen to what Charlotte has to say.

Now it’s your turn with our painting by Roelant Savery. We’ve made a colouring-in page of his bouquet of flowers, which has all kinds of animals crawling around in it. Use your best felt-tips, grab your prettiest pencils and colour in the flowers. Or cover them with colourful balls of crêpe paper. As long as you end up with a cheerful bunch of flowers. And some creepy crawlies!