From the museum website
El fruto de la fe offers the Belgian public a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enjoy forms of art expression which can scarcely ever be found here. The exhibition presents Flemish religious art of the sixteenth century with unique wood sculpture, for the most part still polychrome, and unseen paintings on panel by Flemish masters such as Pieter Pourbus and Pieter Coecke van Aalst.
The main focus of the works is a selection from the artistic heritage of the island of La Palma, one of the Canary Islands off the African coast. Flemish landowners settled there to develop sugar-growing and had the churches adorned with world-famous Flemish works of art which had been exported from Antwerp to Spain and Portugal. Thus there came to be preserved in that area what had been lost by us on a vast scale as a result of the ravages due to the iconoclasm of 1566.
The exhibition sets this chapter of Flemish art in the context of the Atlantic trade routes. The unpublished juxtaposition of the island of La Palma’s collection with works of art from Belgium,
Spain and Portugal also illustrates the interaction between creation and copy, between originality and serial production.
Other venues
Madrid, Fundación Carlos de Amberes (2 December 2004 – 20 February 2005)
Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands, Antiguo Convento de San Francisco-Museo Insular (10 July – 30 August 2005)