by

Antwerp

We got up and had a good breakfast and then took a cab to the main art museum, the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. This is a must see museum, as they have some very famous works. The most interesting painting in my opinion was the Virgin and the Child by Jean Fouquet. Fouquet has few surviving works – this one in particular is almost surrealistic in its use of coloration and use of broad geometric shapes for the figure of the Virgin.

dsc01076

dsc01079

The facace of the Koninkijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten The room just past admission is painted in murals
with a huge skylight

dsc01087

A column inside the museum

koninklijkfront
koninklijkticketback

Ticket for the museum – there are various front
faces based on works from the collection

dsc01080 fouquetvirginandchild
Aviva in the entryway with a sculpture The Virgin and the Child by Fouquet
eyckmadonnaatthefountain
Madonna at the Fountain by Jan van Eyck
dsc01081 dsc01082
A painting we liked
(didn’t get the artist’s name)
The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Frans Floris
dsc01084
A detail from the painting above
dsc01085 dsc01083
A painting we liked
(didn’t get the artist’s name)
Another detail from the painting above
cranacheve metsusjudith
Eve by Lucas Cranach Judith by Jan Metsus

We walked around and ended up at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh. They had a work by a son of Bosch but photos weren’t allowed and they didn’t have a postcard of that one, but it was worth the visit. I notice a lot of similarity between the fantastic works of Bruegel and Bosch.

mayervandenberghticket

Ticket for access to the collection

bruegeldullegriet

Dulle Griet by Pieter Bruegel the elder

We tried to get into the main cathedral, O.-L.-Vrouwekathedraal, but it closes at 3P and we were 15 minutes late.

dsc01088 dsc01091
The entrance to the main cathedral in Antwerp A detail from the facade

We walked across the old market square, Grote Markt.

dsc01092

A building on the old market square

dsc01094

Row houses along the old market

We walked around to the Sint Pauluskerk. The woman working behind the desk at our hotel had suggested this church as one worth visiting for its interior.

dsc01095 dsc01096
The main facade A sculpture area off the main entrance
dsc01097 dsc01098
dsc01099 dsc01100
Four busts from inside the church – note the relics in glass under each bust

We took a train to Brugge – it took about 1 hour, 20 minutes to get there. The hotel was average, the Best Western Premier Hotel Navarra; it was named after the consulate for Spanish Navarra that occupied the building before the hotel.

dsc01108dsc01109

Two views of the Antwerp Centraal train station

antwerptobruggeticket

Our train ticket to Brugge

Revisions:

There are no revisions for this post.

2 Comments

  1. Bundoran2
    10:15 am on October 20th, 2009

    Hello. I’m very interested in the portrait of the Virgin and Child by Jean Fouquet. I am currently an Art History student at URI. I’m writing a paper on this painting, and I have a question for you. Does the museum let the viewer of this painting know that it is the right panel of a diptych? In other words, is the painting displayed with information about the history of this painting? The companion panel of this painting is hanging in a museum in Berlin. Does the curator of the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten let the viewer know this? Is there some kind of facsimile of the left panel of this diptych, known as the Melun Diptych, adjacent to the Virgin and Child? The left panel is Etienne Chevalier and Saint Stephen. I have now contacted the Koninklijk Museum by email twice with this question, but no one has responded. I would appreciate any information that you can give to me, and thank you in advance.
    Elizabeth Bell Carroll
    ivory.tower@verizon.net

  2. Fouquet | Aleph Naught & the Null Set
    7:32 am on June 3rd, 2010

    […] Child, by Jean Fouquet. The painting is a the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, and I remember clearly visiting it; I looked at it for a while adn then went to get Aviva – she stood with her mouth open a good […]

Leave a Reply