Flemish Painting: From Van Eyck to Rubens

Few countries have made such a profound contribution to European art as the land we know today as Belgium. With the development of oil painting in the 15th century onwards, Belgium played an essential role in the evolution of western painting.

The ‘golden age’ of Flemish art began with the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck, before being continued by Hans Memling in Bruges, Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels, and Hugo van der Goes in Ghent. Flemish Mannerist architects spread Renaissance ideas throughout northern Europe, and in van Dyck and Rubens we have two of the most formidable of all Baroque artists.

The first stop on our tour will be Bruges, where we will enjoy a visit to the Gruuthusemuseum, a luxurious city palace reopened in 2019 following a major refurbishment, and housing a multitude of artistic treasures celebrating the glories of the Burgundian age.

Meanwhile, the Groeningemuseum is host to an enviable collection of van Eyck and van der Weyden, and is the setting for Hieronymous Bosch’s Last Judgment. We will also visit the Memling Museum, housed in one of Europe’s oldest medieval hospitals, and pay homage to Michelangelo’s marble Madonna and Child in the Gothic Church of Our Lady.

A particular highlight of our 2021 tour will be the opportunity to view the entirety of the van Eyck brothers’ magnificent Ghent Altarpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, in a new dedicated visitors’ centre at St Bavo’s Cathedral. The panels, some of which have recently been refurbished, will be reunited and on display together at the cathedral for the first time in many years.

We also look forward to a new excursion for 2021, to the city of Mechelen, once the capital of the Burgundian Netherlands and an important political and cultural hub for the Burgundian and early Habsburg princes. A visit to the Museum Hof van Busleyden, a wonderful Renaissance palace, will shed further light upon this period of history. St John’s Church, a stone’s throw from the palace, contains a magnificent altarpiece by Rubens, its central panel depicting the Adoration of the Magi.

In Antwerp, the great commercial port on the Scheldt, we will feel Rubens’s presence in his palatial house and studio, and explore the Mayer van den Bergh Museum, home to a collection of northern Renaissance art assembled during the 19th century. Our tour concludes with a visit to the Musée d’Art Ancien in Brussels, home to Flemish and Belgian paintings dating from the 15th to the 18th century.

We will stay throughout in the centre of Ghent at the four-star NH Gent Belfort, opposite the town hall.

This tour will be led by Rupert Dickens, MA, an art historian specialising in Dutch and Flemish art. Rupert studied art history at Birkbeck, University of London, before gaining a Masters degree in Dutch Golden Age Studies at UCL. Previously a BBC television and radio journalist for more than 20 years, Rupert is now an Arts Society lecturer and a guide lecturer at the Wallace Collection. He has been visiting and working in the Netherlands and Belgium since the 1980s.