CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

New CODART Canon Video Released: Jan Borman’s Saint George Altarpiece in Brussels

A new video featuring one of the 100 artworks in the CODART Canon is now available. In this short video, Emile van Binnebeke, Curator of Sculpture and Furniture at the Art & History Museum in Brussels and Marjan Debaene, Head of Collections at M Leuven and expert on the Borman family, discuss the importance of the Saint George Altarpiece by Jan Borman II (ca. 1460-1516/1520). This spectacular five-meter wide altarpiece was made by Borman in 1493. It tells the story of the martyrdom of Saint George in seven scenes with more than 80 meticulously crafted figures.

The altarpiece has only recently returned to the Brussels museum after a restoration of three years. During this project, restorers discovered, among other things, that the outer wings of the altarpiece had been mounted in reverse after a nineteenth-century restoration. In the video, Emile van Binnebeke and Marjan Debaene show us how the recent restoration affects the interpretation of the altarpiece and talk about the innovations that make this work of art a true masterpiece. Watch the video below or on canon.codart.nl.

More videos

Previously we published a video with Jef Schaeps about the Spinario by Jan Gossart in the Print Room of the University Library in Leiden, as well as a video on a pair of seventeenth-century Wedding Gloves in the Rijksmuseum with Bianca Du Mortier and Femke Diercks. All videos are now available with English subtitles on canon.codart.nl. In the near future, the series will be further expanded by a video on the Doll House of Sara Rothé in the Frans Hals Museum with Marrigje Rikken.