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 ...

Around 1500, portraiture flourished like never before. In countless European cities major Renaissance artists like Hans Holbein II, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Memling and Antonello da Messina produced lifelike portraits at the highest artistic level. For the first time in history, they not only immortalized kings and noblemen but also, and increasingly, powerful bankers, wealthy merchants and renowned scholars. These paintings, busts, medallions, prints and drawings still bear witness to their pow...