Two museums swap 25 paintings and put love between them
Thyssen-Bornemisza ❤️ Mauritshuis – Masterpieces from Madrid opens in The Hague on 15 October. At the same time, 25 works from the Mauritshuis travel to Madrid; love connects the exchange in both cities.
Two collections are travelling at once. From 15 October, 25 works from the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza will be at the Mauritshuis; 25 works from The Hague are on view in Madrid from 9 October. The Mauritshuis says such a simultaneous international exchange has not happened before.
The Hague exhibition’s official title is Thyssen-Bornemisza ❤️ Mauritshuis – Masterpieces from Madrid. The works date from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with love as their connecting theme. The show runs through 17 January 2027.
The selection includes Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation Diptych, Albrecht Dürer’s Christ among the Doctors and El Greco’s Annunciation. The museum says the complete checklist has not yet been made public.
A particular connection runs through Michael Sweerts’s Boy with a Turban, displayed in the exhibition gallery. Girl with a Pearl Earring remains in gallery 15; a screen links it to the Sweerts painting. In this way, a work outside the show can still enter the conversation.
The exchange works in the other direction too: in Madrid, visitors can see Vermeer’s View of Delft, Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Skaters and Hals’s Laughing Boy, among others. That exhibition runs from 9 October 2026 to 10 January 2027.
The Mauritshuis is open Monday from 13:00 to 18:00 and Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00. An adult ticket costs €21; admission is free for visitors aged 18 and under and for Museum Card holders.