Information

The Musée Sandelin occupies the former private mansion of the Comtesse Sandelin, dating from the eighteenth century. Marie-Josèphe Sandelin, the wife of Pierre Sandelin, Comte de Fruges, was of Spanish origin.

Given Saint-Omer’s long history as a Flemish city, the art of Flanders and the Netherlands is strongly represented in the museum’s holdings. The artistic production of northern France and Flanders of the end of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is represented by a number of paintings whose subject is the life of Christ or the Virgin and Child. The collection includes several anonymous works of outstanding quality such as a Franco-Dutch Crucifixion dating from the end of the fifteenth century, a Dutch Baptism of Christ bearing a resemblance to the work of the Antwerp Mannerists, the Adoration of the Magi by the Master of the Khanenko Adoration, and the Holy Family by the Master of the Plump-cheeked Madonnas.

The museum holds a rich collection of paintings by Flemish and Dutch masters of the seventeenth century, including Jan Brueghel (I), Balthasar van der Ast, Frans van Mieris (I), Cornelis Bega, Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, as well as a masterpiece by the great portraitist Thomas de Keyser of Amsterdam: a pair of portraits of Henrick Verburg and Elisabeth van der Aa (1628).

Ceramics represent another major group, numbering 900 seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pieces, including tiles, dishes, and vases. The collections also include alabaster sculptures of the sixteenth century and a set of Flemish furniture (Antwerp) from the first half of the seventeenth century. These pieces have been contextualized by reconstructed rooms and dramatic hangings.

Romain Saffré, Director (March 2025)

Collection catalogues

Catalogue des peintures
Saint-Omer 1981