National Gallery of Art, Washington 28 January – 13 May 2018, curator John Oliver Hand Art Museum of Estonia – The Kumu Museum, Tallinn 8 June – 16 September 2018, curator Greta Koppel

In 2018, the Art Museum of Estonia, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, is organising a large-scale exhibition on Michel Sittow (ca 1469–1525), a painter from Estonia who became a sought-after and highly renowned artist in the royal courts of Europe at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.

The acclaimed master had been forgotten for centuries when documents found in the Tallinn city archives identified this historical individual a few decades ago. Now, nearly 500 years after his death, his first solo exhibition is being organised.

Today, experts on Netherlandish art highly value Michel Sittow’s paintings, which are exquisitely executed. His oeuvre, which covers a period of about twenty years, is scattered among famous museums around the world: the Louvre, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the National Galleries in London and Washington DC, etc. Several of the master’s paintings have been included in large exhibitions, but until now a solo exhibition of Michel Sittow’s works has never been organised.