Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum

The national museum of the Netherlands has photographed and digitized many artifacts and artworks from Sri Lanka. A search using the keywords of “Ceylon” or “Lanka” yields over 300 items. Highlights of the collection include seventeenth and eighteenth-century sketches and paintings of Sri Lankan places, people, and wildlife, especially birds by renowned Dutch artists such as Jan Brandes,Cornelis Steiger and Jan Luyken, as well as nineteenth-century photographs. There are also many coins, select pieces of wooden furniture, ivory carvings, and ceremonial weapons. The Rijksmuseum has also published provenance reports with detailed object analyses for six of these Sri Lankan ceremonial weapons.

• Art History
• Material Culture
• History
• Environmental Studies