ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses two parallel examples from the Southern and Northern Low Countries: the houses of the internationally renowned artists Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt van Rijn. The respective houses of Rubens and Rembrandt are significant for Belgian and Dutch international tourism. Independent commercial city guides aimed at English-speaking tourists present the Rubens House as second only in importance to Antwerp's major art museum, the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Both art historians and visitors to galleries and heritage sites are much more concerned with Rembrandts domestic relationships than with his professional contact with female patrons. The chapter analyses which women are perceived to be most important to each artist's life, and how that is presented in tourist-oriented literature. It is notable that women as well as men populate the dolls house, just as they both have a presence in the current interpretation of the Rembrandt House.
