Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels

David Teniers the Younger painted Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels around 1653, one of the most important gallery paintings of the seventeenth century depicting the Habsburg governor's extraordinary collection of Flemish, Italian, and Dutch paintings. Teniers served as the archduke's keeper of pictures and supervised the installation of the collection, giving him intimate knowledge of every work. His gallery pictures — showing multiple paintings within the architectural space of the gallery — were simultaneously inventory records, diplomatic gifts, and sophisticated art-world documents that established the collector's identity through the images he owned. The archduke's collection eventually became the nucleus of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The miniaturist precision with which Teniers reproduces the paintings hanging in the gallery creates a remarkable document of the collection, each work identifiable despite its tiny scale, within a convincing perspectival interior.