Shepherds beside Roman Ruins

In January 1795 French revolutionary armies crossed the frozen rivers into the Dutch Republic, and the stadholder William V fled to England. His paintings stayed behind. The French shipped them to Paris for the new national museum in the Louvre, and this canvas by Berchem went with them. It came back only after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. In 1816 it joined the Royal Picture Gallery, housed in this same building on the Buitenhof, and in 1822 it moved across the pond to the Mauritshuis.

Berchem signed and dated it in 1661. Under the broken arches of a huge ruin overgrown with bushes, herders drive their animals through a shallow stream. A young woman on a mule reaches out towards a cow, a white goat and a dog splash alongside, and on the bank at the right a man rests with his staff. Today the painting, part of the Mauritshuis collection, is back in the Gallery Prince Willem V, where it first hung in 1816.