Nearly every conceivable angle of Rembrandt studies having been explored by now, the conversation that took place among the Rijksmuseum officials putting it together must have sounded something like this:

"Well, everybody loved van Gogh and Gauguin, Picasso and Braque, Picasso and Matisse. Why not Rembrandt and Caravaggio?" Silence. "Because they never met? Because Caravaggio was dead when Rembrandt was 4. Because they lived in different countries and Rembrandt never even saw a painting by Caravaggio?"

Strictly speaking, it is actually a ludicrous idea for an exhibition — so unorthodox that it causes you to look differently at pictures you may have seen a million times, either in the flesh or in reproduction.

--from the New York Times