On Friday, 12 December 2025, the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) is organizing its 24th Art History Seminar at KIK-IRPA. This year’s edition is devoted to sixteenth-century workshop practices in the Low Countries.
The conference will address a broad range of crafts and artistic disciplines, bringing together research on painting, sculpture, metalwork, stained-glass, architecture, and other fields. By examining both shared and divergent techniques, materials, and modes of organization, the event seeks to investigate the connections between different workshop practices and their broader cultural, economic, and intellectual contexts.
By convening specialists from art history, conservation, technical art history, and related disciplines, the 24th edition of the Art History Seminar aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and to reassess the workshop as a site of knowledge exchange and artistic innovation in the early modern Low Countries.
Program
KIK-IRPA Conference Room
Parc du Cinquantenaire 1 ‒ 1000 Brussels
09:00 – Welcome and coffee
09:20 – Word of welcome by Dr. Hilde De Clercq (General Director, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA)
09:30 – Introduction by Dr. Oliver Kik (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA)
Session I: Paint and Brushes
Chair: Till-Holger Borchert (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum)
09:45 – Dr. Natasja Peeters (War Heritage Institute): Workshops, workshop practices, the Guild of Saint Luke, and the market for paintings in Antwerp, ca. 1453-ca. 1585: the archival vantage point
10:00 – Dr. Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): Les ateliers d’enlumineurs dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux au XVIe siècle
10:15 – Dr. Bart Fransen (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): Een Vlaamse meester in een Italiaans Palazzo
10:30 – Discussion
11:00 – Coffee break
Session II: Drawing and Underdrawing
Chair: Prof. Dr. Maximiliaan Martens (Universiteit Gent)
11:30 – Dr. Christina Currie (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): The Science of Attribution: Exploring a Monumental Work by Pieter Brueghel the Younger
11:45 – Dr. Oliver Kik (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): The intermediality of modelbooks and sketchbooks in 16th-century Netherlandish workshop practice of painters, sculptors and goldsmiths
12:00 – Discussion
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Visit to the Stone Sculpture Studio by Judy De Roy and Sam Huysmans
Session III: Pallets and Chisels
Chair: Dr. Bart Fransen (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA)
14:00 – Dr. Géraldine Patigny & Dr. Eduardo Lamas (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): De la palette au ciseau : artistes en mouvement. Ateliers et métamorphoses professionnelles entre Ibérie, Pays-Bas et Italie (XVIe siècle)
14:15 – Dr. Emmanuelle Mercier (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): Évolution de la pratique des sculpteurs sur bois dans les anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux entre XVe et XVIe siècle
14:30 – Discussion
15:00 – Coffee break
Session IV: Screens and Windows
Chair: Dr. Oliver Kik (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA)
15:30 – Dr. Isabelle Lecocq (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA): Projets à échelle réduite et vitraux du XVIe siècle : un éclairage mutuel
15:45 – Dr. Emmanuel Joly (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage ‒ KIK-IRPA) : Building the Rood Screen: Workshop Practices and Processes of Making a Liturgical Device in the Southern Low Countries (1450-1700)
16:00 – Discussion
16:30 – Closing remarks
Tickets and Registration
Registration is mandatory and costs €10. The application from is available on the event website.