Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm in seiner Galerie in Brüssel

David Teniers the Younger had a rare job. He was court painter and keeper of the picture collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the Habsburg governor of the Southern Netherlands, who bought Italian paintings by the hundred while stationed in Brussels. Here Teniers shows the archduke visiting his own gallery, the walls packed frame to frame with Venetian and other works, many of them real pictures you can still identify today. Teniers painted several versions of the room, and they were more than souvenirs. He used them to plan an illustrated inventory of the collection, hiring engravers to reproduce the Italian paintings, and the book that resulted, printed in 1659, is often called the first illustrated art catalogue. Much of the collection he documented is now the core of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.