Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSKA)

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) is the most comprehensive art museum of the Flemish region in Belgium. The institution was founded in 1810 and some 8500 works of art are housed in a monumental building from 1890 in the southern part of Antwerp. The oldest objects in the museum collection can be traced back to the guild of St. Luke.

The 56 Netherlandish paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth-century include masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, and Gerard David. KMSKA holds 211 works from the sixteenth-century, originating in the Low Countries, amongst of which important works by Quinten and Jan Massijs, Joachim Patinir, Marinus van Reymerswale, Joachim Beuckelaer, Frans Floris (The Fall of the Rebel Angels) and Maerten de Vos. Another strength of the museum are its 551 seventeenth-century paintings, including 28 works by Peter Paul Rubens (Adoration of the Magi, Madonna with Saints, The Prodigal Son) and Max Rooses’ collection of prints by the same artist. Other highlights from this century are excellent pictures by Jacob Jordaens, Anthony van Dyck, Adriaen Brouwer, Frans Francken II, Cornelis de Vos, Michaelina Wautier and Jan Siberechts.

Last but not least KMSKA boasts a small but choice selection of Dutch pictures, such as Frans Hals’s Portrait of Stephanus Geraerdts and a Fisherboy, portraits by Rembrandt and his school, landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema and Nicolaes Berchem II and still-life’s by Floris van Schooten and Jan Davidsz. de Heem.

Dr. Nico van Hout, Head of Collection Research – Curator Seventeenth Century Paintings (November 2021)