BOEKFICHE The Bold and the Beautiful - In Flemish Portraits

Men in stately black, women with huge ruffs, children with golden rattles, old women with wizened faces, and self-satisfied artists… These are the main players in just about every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the tract of land that we today call Flanders was the economic, cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money flows – with everyone who ...

From Memling to Rubens

The Golden Age of Flanders

Why did Hans Memling paint everything in such minute detail? How did Rubens, in just a few brushstrokes, create special effects that Steven Spielberg would envy? And why was the Southern Netherlands the artistic centre of the world for three centuries?

From Memling to Rubens: The Golden Age of Flanders tells the story of Flemish art from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as you’ve never read it before. It’s a rollercoaste...

In praise of folly: on the fool and the jester in Flemish art

According to medieval theologians, faith is a deadly serious business. Humour and virtue are irreconcilable, because laughter is uncontrollable and escapes the control of reason. A modest smile is permitted. But laughing loudly, grinning and grimacing: these are the playing field of the devil – just as pernicious as other uncontrollable urges, such as physical love or the addiction of the gambler. That is the domain of the peasan...