The Rijksmuseum used to be the dullest of the major European collections. It looked as though Ursula Hoff had painted all the pictures. An air of dowdiness hung over the massive building and crowded collections where the good and the great indiscriminately mixed in with the mediocre in warren-like galleries with an over-supply of the decorative arts.

After years of ‘recuperation’, as the Spanish architects Cruz and Cortiz call their work, the ‘new’ Rijks has risen phoenix-like to give the most compelling account of its national school. The transformation came neither easily nor cheaply at 375 million euros and a shuttered museum for a decade.