The Menagerie

The animals on this balustrade come from four continents. The Rijksmuseum identifies two squirrel monkeys from Central America, two white sulphur-crested cockatoos from Australia, a grey parrot from Africa and a purple-naped lory from Indonesia, gathered with other ornamental birds around a carved garden vase and an oriental carpet. Around 1690, creatures like these reached the Dutch Republic on trading ships and were kept by the very rich.

Melchior d'Hondecoeter painted the canvas for Het Loo, the country palace of William III, stadtholder of the Republic and by then also king of England, where it hung above the door of the king's private apartment. When the last stadtholder, William V, fled to England in 1795, the paintings of the House of Orange were taken over by the new Batavian state, and that is how this one entered the national collection.