Amsterdam. Rijksmuseum.

Left: “The Rijksmuseum Research Library is the largest public art history research library in the Netherlands. The online web catalogue contains about 300,000 monographs, 3,400 periodicals and 90,000 art sales catalogues. About 50,000 art sales catalogues published before 1989 are not yet entered in the online catalogue.”

Top right: Nazi chess set.

Bottom right: ‘Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America’ (c. 1535) by Jan Jansz Mostaert. “Habsburg emperor Charles V reigned over a realm on which ‘the sun never set’. It encompassed much of Europe, including Spain and the Low Countries, parts of Central America and the Caribbean. This is the first painting to depict Spanish soldiers subduing the people who lived there. Mostaert added some unusual elements to give his traditional European landscape an exotic ambience: a monkey, a porcupine and parrots.”