Cities of Belgium. Grant Allen's Historical Guides

On either side, 662, good portrait by S. De Vos (himself, dashing and vigorous: every inch an artist): and

104. C. De Vos: Admirable and life-like **portrait of the messenger or porter of the Guild of St. Luke, the Society of Painters of Antwerp, exhibiting the plate belonging to his confraternity. He is covered with medals, which are the property of the Society, and has the air of a shrewd and faithful servant. This living presentment of a real man is deservedly popular.

661. Tolerable portrait by C. De Vos.

403. Van Dyck’s *Entombment (or Pietà), often called Descent from the Cross. This is one of his noblest pictures, but badly restored.

335. Angry swans disturbed by dogs. Snyders.

215. Jordaens: Last Supper. The effect of gloom somewhat foreshadows Rembrandt.

401. Van Dyck: **A Dominican picture (Guiffrey calls it “cold and empty”), painted at his father’s dying wish for the Dominican Nunnery at Antwerp. The two great saints of the Order, St. Dominic, the founder, and St. Catherine of Assisi, the originator of the female branch, stand at the foot of the Cross, which is itself a secondary object in the picture. St. Dominic looks up in adoration; St. Catherine, wearing the crown of thorns, fervently embraces the feet of the Saviour. On the base, a child angel, in a high unearthly light, with a half extinguished torch, points with hope to the figure of the crucified Lord. The whole is emblematic of belief in a glorious Resurrection, through the aid of the Dominican prayers. Interesting inscription on the rock: “Lest earth should weigh too heavily on his father’s soul, A. van Dyck rolled this stone to the foot of the Cross, and placed it in this spot.”

381. Van Hoeck: Madonna and Child, with St. Francis, from the Franciscan Church of the Récollets.

660. Tolerable portrait by C. De Vos.

406. Van Dyck’s noble **Crucifixion, with the sun and moon darkened. One of his most admirable pictures.

677. Jordaens: **Charming family scene, known by the title of “As sing the Old, so pipe the Young.” Three generations – grandparents, parents, and children – engaged in music together. Very catching: a most popular picture.

734. Good *portrait of a priest, by Van Dyck.

402. Fine *portrait of a bishop of Antwerp, by Van Dyck.

404. Van Dyck: **Pietà, altar-piece for a chapel of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. Our Lady holds on her lap the dead Christ, while St. John points out with his finger the wound in His hand to pitying angels. All the formal elements in this scene – Our Lady, St. John, the angels, etc. – belong to the earlier conception of the Pietà, but all have been entirely transfigured by Van Dyck in accordance partly with the conceptions of the School of Rubens, though still more with his own peculiar imagination. It is interesting, however, to note in this touching and beautiful picture, full of deep feeling, how far the type of the St. John has been inherited, remotely, from the School of Van der Weyden. Even the red robe and long hair persist. The features, too, are those with which we are familiar. This is one of the gems of the collection. It shows the direct influence of Italian travel modifying Van Dyck’s style, acquired from Rubens.

This room also contains several other excellent works of the School of Rubens or his more or less remote followers, which I need not particularize.

Now continue into

Room I,

containing what are considered to be the gems among the Rubenses and the later pictures.

Right of the door, Rubens and Brueghel, 319: Small copy of the Dead Christ. Schut, 327: The Beheading of St. George. A pagan priest, behind, endeavours to make him worship an image of Apollo. Above, angels wait to convey his soul to Heaven. This is a somewhat confused picture, with a spacious composition and a fine luminous foreground: it is considered its painter’s masterpiece. Intended for the altar of the Archers (whose patron was St. George), in Antwerp Cathedral.

673. Good still life by Gysels.

669. F. Francken: Portraits of a wealthy family in their own picture gallery.

107. C. De Vos: *Portraits of the Snoek family, in devotion to St. Norbert. This picture requires a little explanation. St. Norbert was the Catholic antagonist of the heretic Tankelin at Antwerp in the 12th century. In this frankly anachronistic picture the Snoek family of the 17th century, portly, well-fed burghers, are represented restoring to the mediæval saint the monstrance and other church vessels removed from his church during the Calvinist troubles. The Snoeks are living personages; the Saint is envisaged as a heavenly character. It is, in short, a highly allegorical picture of the family showing their devotion to true Catholicism, and their detestation of current heresy. In the background stands the town of Antwerp, with the Cathedral and St. Michael. (From the burial chapel of the Snoek family at St. Michael.) There is a Brueghel in Brussels Museum, representing St. Norbert preaching against Tankelin.

307. Beyond the door, Rubens: **Triptych, to adorn a tomb, for the funerary chapel of his friend Rockox. Compare, for size and purpose, the Moretus tomb in the Cathedral. It shows the painter’s early careful manner, and represents in its central piece the Incredulity of St. Thomas. On the wings, the Burgomaster Nicolas Rockox, and his wife, for whose tomb it was painted. The wings are finer than the central portion. This early work, still recalling Van Veen’s academic tone, should be compared with the Van Veens and also with Rubens’s fine portrait of himself and his brother, with Lipsius and Grotius, in the Pitti at Florence. It marks the earliest age, when he was still content with comparatively small sizes, and gave greater elaboration to his work, but without his later dash and vigour. M. Rooses thinks ill of it.

781. *Fine farmyard scene by Rubens, with the story of the Prodigal Son in the foreground. One of the many signs of his extraordinary versatility.

Beyond, on either side of the great Rubens, to be noticed presently, are two pictures by his master, Otto van Veen: 480, The Calling of Matthew, and 479, Zacchæus in the Fig-Tree. These two careful works recall the later Italian Schools, more particularly Titian, and are good examples of that careful academic transitional Flemish art which Rubens was to transform and revivify by the strength of his own exuberant and powerful personality. They are admirably placed here for comparison with

297. Rubens’s famous altar-piece of the Crucifixion, for the Church of the Franciscans, commonly known as the **Coup de Lance. In this splendid work Rubens is seen in one of his finest embodiments. The figure of Christ has fine virility. St. Longinus, to the L., on a white horse, is in the very act of piercing his side. The Magdalen, embracing the foot of the Cross, as ever, throws up her arms with supplicating gesture. To the R. is the Madonna. Behind, a soldier is engaged in breaking the limbs of the Impenitent Thief (always on Christ’s L.) who writhes in his torture. The whole work is full of Rubens’s life and bustle, well contrasted with the academic calm of the Van Veens beside it. Even those who do not love Rubens (and I confess I am of them) must see in such a work as this how his great powers succeeded in effects at which his contemporaries aimed ineffectually. Boldly dramatic, but not sacred.

300. **Triptych by Rubens, commonly known as the Christ à la Paille, painted for a tomb in the Cathedral (compare the Moretus one). In the centre is a Pietà: Joseph of Arimathea supporting the dead body of the Christ on the edge of a stone covered with straw. Behind, Our Lady and another Mary, with the face of St. John just appearing in the background. This “too famous” work is rather a study of the dead nude than a really sacred picture. Some of its details overstep the justifiable limits of horror. The wings are occupied by, L., a so-called Madonna and Child, really a portrait of a lady and boy – (his wife and son?): R., St. John the Evangelist (patron of the person for whose tomb it was painted), accompanied by his eagle.

706. Admirable *portrait by Rubens of Gaspard Groaerts, town secretary. The bust is Marcus Aurelius.

171. J. Fyt: Excellent screaming eagles, with a dead duck. One of the earliest and best presentations of wild life at home.

315. Rubens: Small copy (with variations) of the Descent from the Cross in the Cathedral (by a pupil).

708. One of the best *portraits by Rubens in the Gallery, subject unknown: lacks personal dignity, but Rubens has made the most of him.

The rest of this wall is occupied by some tolerable gigantic altar-pieces and other good works of the School of Rubens. Most of them derive their chief interest from their evident inferiority in design and colour to the handicraft of the Master. They are the very same thing – with the genius omitted.

End wall, 314, Rubens: called the *Holy Trinity. The Almighty supports on His knees the figure of the dead Christ. Behind, hovers the Holy Ghost. On either side, boy angels hold the crown of thorns, the three nails, and the other implements of the Passion. This is really a study in the science of foreshortening, and in the painting of the dead nude, largely suggested, I believe, by a still more unpleasing Mantegna in the Brera at Milan.

719. Above. Excellent fishmongery by Snyders.

212. Janssens: The Schelde bringing wealth to Antwerp, in the allegorical taste of the period.

712. Rubens: St. Dominic.

172. Fyt: Excellent dogs and game.

299. Rubens: An **allegorical picture to enforce the efficacy of the prayers of St. Theresa. The foundress of the Scalzi, dressed in the sober robe of her Carmelite Order, is interceding with Christ for the soul of Bernardino de Mendoza, the founder of a Carmelite convent at Valladolid. Below, souls in Purgatory. In the left-hand corner stands Bernardino, whom, at St. Theresa’s prayer, angels are helping to escape from torment. A fine luminous picture of a most unpleasing subject. Painted for the altar of St. Theresa in the church of her own barefooted Carmelites.

405. Van Dyck: Magnificent portrait of Cesare Alessandro Scaglia, in black ecclesiastical robes, with lace cuffs and collar, and the almost womanish delicate hands of a diplomatic, astute, courtier-like ecclesiastic. The thoughtful eyes and resolute face might belong to a Richelieu.

306. Rubens: **The Education of the Virgin, painted for a chapel of St. Anne. A charming domestic picture of a wealthy young lady of Flanders, pretending to be Our Lady, in a beautifully painted white silk gown. Beside her, her mother, a well-preserved St. Anne, of aristocratic matronly dignity. Behind is St. Joachim, and above, two light little baby angels. The feeling of the whole is graceful courtly-domestic.

481, 482. Two scenes from the life of St. Nicholas, by Van Veen, the master of Rubens. R., he throws through a window three purses of gold as dowries for the three starving daughters of a poor nobleman. (This ornate treatment contrasts wonderfully with the simpler early Italian pictures of the same subject.) L., he brings corn for the starving poor of Myra. Both pictures represent the bourgeois saint in his favourite character of the benefactor of the poor. They are here well placed for contrast with

298. Rubens: **Adoration of the Magi, considered to be his finest embodiment of this favourite subject, and one of his masterpieces. R., Our Lady and Child, with the ox in the foreground, and St. Joseph behind her. L., two kings make their offerings. Behind them, the third, a Moor, in an Algerian costume, leering horribly. Above, the ruined temple, the shed, and the camels. M. Max Rooses calls this work “the chef d’œuvre by which Rubens inaugurated his third manner,” and other critics praise loudly its gorgeous colouring, its audacious composition, its marvellous certainty. To me, the great canvas, with its hideous ogling Moor, is simply unendurable; but I give the gist of authoritative opinion.

312. Rubens: *The Holy Family, known as La Vierge au Perroquet. It is chiefly remarkable as a rich and gorgeous piece of colouring, with a charming nude boy of delicious innocence.

313. Rubens: *Crucifixion. One of his best embodiments of this subject.

Opposite wall.

709. Rubens, partly made-up: Jupiter and Antiope. A mythological subject, treated in a somewhat Italian style, with a quaint little huddling Cupid in the foreground.

Beyond this, three designs by Rubens for Triumphal Cars and Arches, on the occasion of the entry of Ferdinand of Austria in 1635.

The whole of this room contains several other excellent altar-pieces, many of which are Franciscan.

Room J

R. and L. of the door, 105, C. De Vos: Portraits of a husband and wife, with their sons and daughters.

370. Van Cortbemde: The Good Samaritan, pouring in oil and wine in a most literal sense. In the background, the priest and the Levite.

109. Fine portrait of a well-fed Flemish merchant, William Van Meerbeck, by C. De Vos. Behind him his patron, St. William.

748. Van Thulden: Continence of Scipio.

265. Murillo (Spanish School). St. Francis. A reminiscence of the older subject of his receiving the Stigmata. It has the showy and affected pietism of the Spaniards. A mere study.

214. Jordaens: Pharaoh in the Red Sea.

Room N contains several good portraits and views of the town and other places, of the 17th and 18th centuries, many of them excellent as studies of Old Antwerp, enabling us to appreciate the greatness of the architectural losses which the city has sustained. These, however, are essentially works for the visitor to inspect at his leisure. They need little or no explanation. Notice especially 728, 348, 726.

775. Good unknown Flemish portrait.

22. Portraits by Boeyermans.

Room O, beyond, is filled for the most part with canvases of the school of Rubens, mainly interesting for comparison with the works of the master, and needing little comment.

Now return to

Room G,

containing the Dutch Pictures. Many of these are masterpieces of their sort, but need here little save enumeration. The Reformation turned Dutch art entirely upon portraiture, landscape, and domestic scenes. Dutch art is frankly modern.

338. Jan Steen: Samson and the Philistines, as Jan Steen imaged it.

767. Admirable calm sea-piece, by Van der Capelle.

752. Weenix poaching on Hondecoeter’s preserves.

502. A beautiful little Wynants.

399. W. van de Velde the younger: Calm sea, with ships.

398. Admirable cows, by A. van de Velde.

293. Rembrandt: **Admirable portrait of his wife, Saskia; almost a replica of the one at Cassel, perhaps either painted by a pupil, or else from memory after her death, and badly restored. It breathes Dutch modesty.

349. Terburg: *Girl playing a mandoline.

705. Excellent *portrait of a Burgomaster, by Rembrandt.

324. A charming Schalken.

628. Unknown: perhaps Frans Hals: Excellent portrait of a calm old lady.

668. Karel du Jardin: Admirable landscape, with cows.

188. Celebrated and vigorous **Fisher-boy of Haarlem, with a basket, by Frans Hals, rapidly touched with the hand of a master.

339. One of Jan Steen’s village merry-makings.

26. Delicate soft landscape, by J. and A. Both.

675. A mill, by Hobbema.

768. Van der Velde: Fine landscape, with cows.

427. Flowers by Van Huysum.

674. Admirable *portrait, by Frans Hals, of a round-faced, full-blooded, sensuous Dutch gentleman. Full of dash and vigour.

738. Venus and Cupid, by W. van Mieris.

437. Excellent fishmonger, by W. van Mieris.

466. *The Smoker, by A. van Ostade.

682. Arch and charming portrait, by Mytens.

773. A fine Wynants.

382. B. van der Helst: Child with a dog.

679. Some of Molenaer’s peasant folk.

713. Ruysdael: *Waterfall in Norway.

The room is full of other fine and delicately-finished pictures of the Dutch School, of which I say nothing, only because they are of the kind which are to be appreciated by careful examination, and which do not need explanation or description.

Room K. contains Flemish works of the later School of Rubens and the beginning of the decadence.

The remaining rooms of the Gallery have modern pictures, belonging to the historical and to the archaic Schools of Antwerp. These works lie without the scope of the present Guides, but many of them are of the highest order of merit, and they well deserve attention both for their own intrinsic excellence and for comparison with the works of the 15th and early 16th centuries on which they are based. The paintings of Leys and his followers, mainly in Room T, are especially worth consideration in this connection. These painters have faithfully endeavoured to revert to the principles and methods of the great early Flemish Masters, and though their work has often the almost inevitable faults and failings of a revival, it cannot fail to interest those who have drunk in the spirit of Van Eyck and Memling.

On the ground floor, a good copy, 413, etc., of the Adoration of the Lamb at Ghent, useful for filling up the gaps in your knowledge, and more readily inspected at leisure and from a nearer point of view than the original. The portraits and battle scenes on the remaining walls need little comment.

D. THE TOWN IN GENERAL

[Mediæval Antwerp, now no more, lay within a narrow ring of walls in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral. Its circumference formed a rough semi-circle, whose base-line was the Schelde, while its outer walls may still be traced on a good map about the Rempart Ste. Catherine and the Rempart du Lombard. This oldest district still remains on the whole an intricate tangle of narrow and tortuous streets, with a few ancient buildings. Later Renaissance Antwerp stretched to the limit of the existing Avenues in their northern part, though the southern portion (from the Place Léopold on) extends beyond the boundary of the 17th century city, and occupies the site of the huge demolished Old Citadel, built by Alva. Antwerp, however, has undergone so many changes, and so few relics of the mediæval age now survive, that I can hardly apply to its growth the historical method I have employed in other Belgian towns. It will be necessary here merely to point out the principal existing objects of interest, without connecting them into definite excursions.]

The centre of mediæval Antwerp was the Grand’ Place, which may be reached from the Place Verte, through the little triangular Marché aux Gants, in front of the main façade of the Cathedral. It was, however, so entirely modernized under the Spanish régime that it now possesses very little interest. The W. side of the square is entirely occupied by the Hôtel-de-Ville, a poor Renaissance building, which looks very weak after the magnificent Gothic Town Halls of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, and Louvain. The façade is extremely plain, not to say domestic. The ground floor has an arcade in imitation of Italian rustica work, above which come two stories with Doric and Ionic columns (and Corinthian in the centre); the top floor being occupied by an open loggia, supporting the roof. In the centre, where we might expect a spire, rises a false gable-end, architecturally meaningless. The niche in the gable is occupied by a statue of Our Lady with the Child (1585), the patroness of the city, flanked by allegorical figures of Wisdom and Justice.

The interior has been modernized: but it contains one fine hall, the Salle Leys, decorated with noble archaistic paintings by Baron Leys. It may be visited before 9, or after 4 in the evening (1 franc to the concierge). In the Burgomaster’s Room is also a good Renaissance chimney-piece, from the Abbey of Tongerloo, with reliefs of the Marriage at Cana, the Brazen Serpent, and Abraham’s Sacrifice.

The square contains a few Guild Houses of the 17th century, the best of which is the Hall of the Archers, to the R. of the Hôtel-de-Ville, a handsome and conspicuous building, lately surmounted by a gilt figure of St. George slaying the Dragon, in honour of the patron saint of the Archers. The older Guild Houses, however, were mostly destroyed by the Spaniards. The square, as it stands, being Renaissance or modern, cannot compare with the Grand’ Place in most other Belgian cities.

The centre of the Place is occupied by a bronze fountain, with a statue of Silvius Brabo, a mythical hero of mediæval invention, intended to account for the name Brabant. He is said to have cut off the hand of the giant Antigonus, who exacted a toll from all vessels entering the Schelde, under penalty of cutting off the hand of the skipper, – a myth equally suggested by a false etymology of Antwerp from Hand Werpen (Hand throwing). The Hand of Antwerp, indeed, forms part of the city arms, and will meet you on the lamp-posts and elsewhere. It is, however, the ordinary Hand of Authority (Main de Justice), or of good luck, so common in the East, and recurring all over Europe, as on the shields of our own baronets. Such a hand, as an emblem of authority, was erected over the gate of many mediæval Teutonic cities.

One of the objects best worth visiting in Antwerp, after the Cathedral and the Picture Gallery, is the Plantin-Moretus Museum containing many memorials of a famous family of Renaissance printers, whose monuments we have already seen in the Cathedral. To reach it you turn from the Place Verte into the Rue des Peignes, almost opposite the S. door of the Cathedral. The second turning to the R. will lead you into the small Place du Vendredi, the most conspicuous building in which is the Museum.

Beyond advising a visit, it is difficult to say much about this interesting old house and its contents. Those who are lovers of typography or of old engravings will find enough in it to occupy them for more than one morning. Such had better buy the admirable work, Le Musée Plantin-Moretus, by M. Max Rooses, the conservator. On the other hand, the general sight-seer will at least be pleased with the picturesque courtyard, draped in summer by the mantling foliage and abundant clusters of a magnificent old vine, as well as with the spacious rooms, the carved oak doorways, balustrades, and staircases, the delicious galleries, the tiles and fireplaces, and the many admirable portraits by Rubens or others. Were it merely as a striking example of a Flemish domestic interior of the upper class during the Spanish period, this Museum would well deserve attention. Read the following notes before starting.

The house of Plantin was established by Christopher Plantin of Tours (born 1514), who came to Antwerp in 1549, and established himself as a printer in 1555. He was made Archetypographer to the King by Philip II., and the business was carried on in this building by himself, his son-in-law, Moretus, and his descendants, from 1579 till 1875. It was Plantin’s daughter, Martina, who married John Moretus (see the Cathedral), and under the name of Plantin-Moretus the business was continued through many generations to our own day. The firm were essentially learned printers, setting up works in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, or even in Oriental types, and issuing editions of many important classical authors. I will not describe the various rooms, about which the reader can wander for himself at his own sweet will, but will merely mention that they contain admirable portraits of the Plantin and Moretus families, and of their famous editor, Justus Lipsius, by Rubens, and others. (The Lipsius is particularly interesting for comparison with the one at Florence in the Pitti.) The dwelling-rooms and reception-rooms, of the family, with their fine early furniture, are now open to the visitor. So is the quaint little shop, facing the street, the composing room and proof-readers’ room, the study occupied by Lipsius, and the library, with examples of many of the books printed by the firm. The original blocks of their woodcuts and of their capital letters, with the plates of their engravings, are likewise shown, together with old and modern impressions. Do not suppose from this, however, that the place is only interesting to book-hunters or lovers of engravings. The pictures and decorations alone, – nay, the house itself – will amply repay a visit.