Information
Established around a group of works consigned by the French State at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen holds a hundred or so Flemish and Dutch paintings dating mainly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Represented are the great Flemish history painters such as Pieter Brueghel II (The Census at Bethlehem), Jacob Jordaens (Abraham Grapheus), and Peter Paul Rubens (Abraham and Melchizedek), while the Dutch artists in the collection illuminate the birth of the genres, from the still life (Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Willem van Aelst, Jacob van Walscapelle) to the landscape (Salomon van Ruysdael, Jan van Goyen).
The museum’s main masterpiece is the Virgin and Child by Rogier van der Weyden. A pendant of the portrait of Laurent de Froimont (today in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels), this small panel was part of the Bernard Mancel legacy. The Mancel collection entered the museum in 1872 and numbers some 50,000 prints, including sheets signed by Aegidius Sadeler (II), Hendrick Goltzius, and Maarten van Heemskerck.
Text provided by the museum (April 2025)
Collection catalogues
Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts: peintures des écoles étrangères
Debaisieux, Françoise
Paris 1994