CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Alexander Van Haute (after a lost 16th-century painting by Lucas D’Heere), View of Saint Bavo’s Abbey and the City of Ghent , 1701-1702
STAM, Ghent

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Tuesday, 17 March

1. MSK: Visit to the permanent collection

with Candice Van Heghe and Inez De Prekel
Ghent’s Museum of Fine Arts (MSK), founded in 1798, is the oldest museum of art in Belgium. It occupies a monumental building designed by the city architect Charles van Rysselberghe. After a collecting history of 225 years, the museum now owns almost 20,000 European artworks from the Middle Ages to 1950: paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. The core collection originated from Ghent’s churches and monasteries. It consists of an ensemble of paintings by seventeenth-century Flemish masters such as Gaspar de Crayer, Frans Francken the Elder, and Maarten De Vos. Around 1900, the collection was greatly expanded thanks to the Friends of the Museum. Their donations, bequests, and purchases enriched the Old Masters collection with masterpieces by artists including Hieronymus Bosch, Gerard Horenbout, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck. This tour will be led by Candice Van Heghe and Inez De Prekel, both Assistant Curator.

Jheronimus Bosch (1440/1460-1516), Saint Jerome, ca. 1485-1495, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent

2. MSK: In-depth visit to the exhibition ‘Unforgettable. Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750′

with Frederica Van Dam
The exhibition Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 focuses on the crucial role of women in the artistic life of the Low Countries. For the first time, 150 works by forty-odd often overlooked female artists from this region have been placed on view together. The curator, Dr. Frederica Van Dam, take visitors on a journey dwelling on themes such as identity, tradition and ambition, social expectations, networks, value, and legacy. Basing themselves on specific examples, they illuminate the stories of artists such as Judith Leyster, Johanna Vergouwen, Johanna Koerten, Catharina Backer, and Clara Peeters, as well as individual artworks and their provenance. This tour will be led by Frederica Van Dam, Curator of Old Masters, MSK.

3. Saint Bavo’s Cathedral and the Ghent Altarpiece

The Gothic St. Bavo’s Cathedral is the oldest church in Ghent, with twelfth-century architectural elements including the crypt, which has been in use for a thousand years. Originally named St. John’s Church, it has been home to the Ghent Altarpiece since Jan van Eyck completed his masterpiece in 1432. Jan’s brother, Hubert van Eyck, who started the altarpiece earlier in the fifteenth century, is buried in the cathedral. The Ghent Altarpiece is not the only famous artwork in St. Bavo’s. The interior reflects ten centuries of art history, featuring Neogothic restorations, as well as Peter Paul Rubens’s Conversion of Saint Bavo (1624) and a monumental pulpit by Laurent Delvaux.

Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, photo by Ton Nolles via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

4. STAM – Ghent City Museum

with Wout Devuyst
Ghent City Museum (STAM) has only existed in its present form as a city museum since 2010. However, the origins of its collection go all the way back to the founding of a Musée historique belge in 1833. The museum is housed in a former Cistercian abbey that was partly destroyed during the Iconoclastic Fury and the time of the Calvinist Republic of Ghent (1577-1584). Two wings of the medieval abbey remain, with fourteenth-century pre-Eyckian murals in the refectory. The rest of the abbey was rebuilt in the seventeenth century.

During the excursion, we will explore the permanent exhibition on the city’s history, The Story of Ghent. Highlights in this chronological display include the thirteenth-century tomb of Viscount Hugo II of Ghent, monumental brasses, the fifteenth-century battle standard of the city’s militia, silver messenger badges, a series of mark plates of the Ghent goldsmiths, the oldest painted aerial view of Ghent, and processional torches of the craft guilds dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This tour will be led by Wout De Vuyst, Curator.

Agnes vanden Bossche (attribution), City militia’s battle standard with the Maiden of Ghent, late fifteenth century, STAM, Ghent

5. Visit to St Nicholas’ Church and St. Michael’s Church

This excursion takes in two of Ghent’s oldest churches. St. Nicholas’ Church is at the heart of the city. Its origins are in the thirteenth century, when the building was constructed in Tournai stone in a style exemplifying Scheldt Gothic. Finally completed in the seventeenth century, thanks to the support of the traders’ guild, the church’s main altar features an altarpiece by the Ghent painter Nicolas de Liemaecker. The nave was recently restored to its original colors. St. Michael’s Church is documented as early as the eleventh century. It was never formally finished, with construction halted in 1672 after a failed effort to build a tower. The interior blends Neogothic and medieval elements. Highlights include St. Francis of Paola by Jusepe de Ribera and Anthony Van Dyck’s Golgotha, as well as a superb nineteenth-century pulpit by Jean Francois Franck and Virgin and Child by the Ghent sculptor Rombaut Pauwels, who was clearly inspired by Michelangelo’s Madonna in Bruges.

6. Castle of the Counts (Gravensteen)

The first castle on the Gravensteen site was built in the ninth century as a fortress to protect Ghent from Viking raids. The current edifice dates from the twelfth century and served as the court of the counts of Flanders until 1353. In subsequent centuries, it was used variously to house Ghent’s court of justice, prison, mint, and – in the nineteenth century – as a cotton mill and factory. Gravensteen was eventually restored to its twelfth-century appearance by Jozef de Waele and when displayed at the 1913 World Exhibition, proved to be one of Ghent’s most popular attractions. This excursion will delve deeper into the building’s various incarnations and its significance in the city’s history.

Castle of the Counts (Gravensteen), Ghent. Photo: Mattias Hill, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

7. St. Peter’s Abbey and Our Lady of St Peter’s Church

St. Peter’s Abbey and Our Lady of St. Peter’s Church originate from the seventh century, but the current structures are much newer. The Iconoclastic Fury of 1566 destroyed significant parts of the church, which was eventually rebuilt in the seventeenth century. Pieter Huyssens was appointed to lead the construction project, and the building is now regarded as one of the highlights of Baroque architecture in the Low Countries. The medieval abbey was fortunately saved, although it was no longer used as such after the French Revolution. It contains major artworks, including paintings by Jan Janssens and Gasper de Crayer.

St. Peter’s Abbey, Ghent. Photo: harry_nl, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, via Flickr

8. Ghent University: special collections and Boekentoren (tbc)

More information about this excursion will be published as soon as we have the final confirmation.

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