If it ain't Baroque

I arrived in Antwerp’s fabulous train station. It’s worth a look even if you don’t arrive by train. It has an enormous glass roof (which two men on ropes were cleaning when I arrived) and then a huge entrance hall which is very fancy. Lots of money in Antwerp in the late 19^th century I suspect. It’s being renovated at the moment (Isn’t all of Europe!) so you can’t really see the outside at all but I suspect it is also beautiful. 

I headed out of town towards the hostel which was in one of the inner suburbs along with most of the middle-eastern population of Antwerp. If you want good food, this the way to come. I left my bags at the hostel and headed back into the centre of town which was about 20 minutes walk back the way I had came. The weather was lovely so I wanted to maximise my time outside for the day. Antwerp is quite spread out for an old town and I’m not sure why it didn’t get the usual small old town with a few other buildings on the edges. It seems that a lot was added to the city in the 17^th century so maybe that was when things moved out into the suburbs a bit more. I headed to the old middle with the town hall and the cathedral. The town hall square is lovely with a big statue (or it may be a fountain that just doesn’t have water at the moment) of the story which gives the city its name. There was meant to be a giant living in the river and some boy cut off his hand and threw it into the water (that’s the one standing on the top with the giant hand). I’m not quite sure where the dragon on the side fits in. 

I grabbed some fries for lunch which I’m sad to say aren’t as good as the Dutch ones and are more expensive. I sat down near the river in the sunshine to eat them. The river front isn’t all that pretty and the river is fairly flat and brown so I didn’t bother walking along the edge. I had a look at the outside of the funny little castle down there which it turns out is the maritime museum. I returned to the centre of town and to the Church of Our Lady which is the cathedral. Antwerp was the centre of the counter reformation and remained Catholic throughout and has some fabulous churches to show for it. The building was built in the 14^th to 16^th centuries but was fully redecorated in the Baroque style on the inside. It’s had a rough run with a fire, attack by the iconoclasts in the 16^th century, pillaging by the French in the 19^th century but they just kept bouncing back and adding new stuff (I suspect that they had some spare baroque altars out the back to replace the ones that were stolen over the years as they don’t appear to have any shortage). It’s four euros to get in but is well worth it as it is almost an art gallery on the inside. 

Baroque pulpits seem to be the specialty of Antwerp and the one in the cathedral doesn’t disappoint. It’s an example of naturalistic baroque and is covered in carved wooden birds though it does still have the requisite angels on the top section. It’s enormous with two sweeping staircases. 

Now a church wouldn’t be a church in Antwerp if it didn’t have a few Rubens. He was the artist who put the great big shiny, gilded, held up by angels, capital B into Baroque and was truly adored even in his own lifetime. Here was a man who did things on a grand scale and the Catholic church loved him for it. The cathedral has several of his large scale altarpieces. The first that I came to was the Descent from the Cross which is in one of the transcepts. It’s a triptych which is about 4m by 6m and was commissioned by a guild that had St Christopher as its patron. They didn’t want to put St Christopher on the front of the altar as he was a little out of fashion at the time, so they had a theme of carrying Christ and had the pregnant Mary, the descent from the cross and the presentation at the temple instead. There is a St Christopher on the back of one of the wings instead. 

The middle of the church has a large dome which oddly has a canvas hanging in the top of it rather than a dome painting. It’s by  Cornelius Schut and is of the Assumption of the Virgin. It’s hard to see as you can’t stand under the middle of the dome and it is quite high up. 

Rubens also painted a couple of the memorials in the side chapels but also did two more of the altars. The main altarpiece is one of his of the Assumption of the Virgin and is surrounded by an enormous marble altar with a larger than lifesized Holy Trinity at the top holding a marble crown. In the other cross nave is the other altar by Rubens, the Raising of the Cross. This one was originally made for another church but was bought by the cathedral in the 19^th century. It has a brown and white spaniel in the foreground and I wonder if it was his dog as I have seen it appear in a few of his religious paintings. 

Of course, the cathedral has more than just Rubens, the place is full of paintings by the Flemish masters. Being back in the Catholic church again, they also have those weird creepy dolls of the Virgin and child with the fancy dresses and crowns. Our Lady of Antwerp has quite a wardrobe and they have the dresses for the baby Jesus on display next to the altar. 

Another frequent feature in the Flemish churches is the dark wooden carved confessional and the cathedral has nine of them. They generally have full sized statues of angels and saints or allegorical figures as well as putti and stories carved into the backs. They were made in the 18^th century for an abbey near Antwerp and were moved into the cathedral after the French Revolution. 

I walked back through the centre of town and headed to St Paul’s. As you enter the church building, on the right is a calvary garden that must have at least 40 figures in it. It’s massive with a grotto that is built onto the side of the church building. The outside of the church is again gothic but the inside is baroque. Both sides of the church are lined with the dark wood carved confessionals and stalls with the full sized angels on them. Above the stalls are a series of paintings of the 15 mysteries of the Rosary and they were painted by Van Dyck, Rubens, Jordaens and de Vos (basically a who’s who of Flemish painting in the early 17^th century). The altarpiece at the end used to be a real Caragavvio but it was stolen by the Austrians and the painting there is now a copy of the original. The main altar was a Rubens but this was also stolen (only by the French this time) and now is a copy from the 19^th century. It’s surrounded by a large black and white marble altar from the mid 17^th century. The sides of the choir are covered in graves including one designed by Rubens. The entrance into the choir has two large side doors with life sized lions at their bases and spots on the sides for reliquaries. The pulpit is quite sedate by Antwerp standards (though then again Liberace was quite sedate by Antwerp Baroque standards). 

I headed back out into the streets and walked past St Carolus Borromeus church but I didn’t stop as I wanted to make it to St Jakob’s before it closed. I was actually really lucky with my timing in Antwerp as many of the churches don’t open regularly until April 1 and that was the day I arrived. 

St Jakob’s is where the pilgrims going to Spain and Santiago de Compostella set off from. The church is late gothic with a baroque interior. It was the parish church of Rubens and he is buried in one of the side chapels. It’s 2 euros to get into this church but it’s well worth it. It’s slightly less decorated than the other two churches that I visited this day but that doesn’t really say much. There is a quite bizarre grave stone that has a man seemingly playing hide and seek with a pair of skeletons. There is another of the Maria and Child dolls in a side chapel with a collection of clothes. The main altar is unusual in that it doesn’t have a painting at all and is just of carved marble. At the back of the main altar is the chapel where Rubens is buried. It has a huge carved marble altar next to it. I suppose the church owed him a lot. 

It was 5 pm when I left the church (and they literally locked the door behind me). The rest of the town was also closing so I headed back to the hostel. I had some dinner at a Moroccan take away near the hostel called Roma and it was really good and cooked fresh for me. I ate in the hostel and then hung around for the evening. The hostel has a lounge and dining room so there was plenty of space to sit around. 

The next morning I set off on the long walk through to the museum district which is nearly an hour from the hostel. The fine arts museum in Antwerp covers both ancient and modern art in the one building. The entrance hall is very impressive and was painted by one of the former directors of the museum in the 19^th century. It covers the history of art in Antwerp and has portraits of the city’s famous painters and sculptors. 

Upstairs is the older art and downstairs the modern. The order is a little unusual and they don’t seem to have any pattern to the way that they have named the rooms either (you start in J and then go into Q if you follow the paintings chronologically). 

It starts with gothic religious art including the best of the Flemish primitives including Rogier van der Weyden. There is a great 3D piece from the 16^th century with painted doors and a central section made of wire and fabric. They were very popular in convents as devotional gardens. Unfortunately, the room with the five large altar pieces by the Primitives was closed for renovations. 

One of the most impressive rooms is the Rubens Room which is continuous with the Van Dyck/Jordaens room. This large room has all the large paintings by these three artists that wouldn’t fit in a normal display. You pretty much have to stand on the other side of the room to see the whole painting. They are mostly religious in this section. There are other pieces by these artists in the other rooms off this section. It took me about two and a half hours to get through the upstairs section and I decided that I didn’t have time to go through the modern art section as well so I grabbed my bag and headed off to get some lunch.

I grabbed a loaf of raisin bread to eat with my apple for lunch in a little mall in the sunshine before heading for the Museum Mayer van den Bergh. This museum was set up by a very wealthy Antwerpian family. The son was a very keen collector of all sorts of items but died before he could organize his museum. His mother set it up in the early 20^th century after her son’s premature death. The museum has been set up to look like a house but it was actually built specifically for the museum collection. It’s a fascinating place with lots of interesting bits and pieces (really what ever took their fancy really). They have some of the great children’s portraits by Cornelius de Vos. It was really odd that in the 17^th century boys wore dresses and had long hair until they were 7 or 8 years old so you have to work out the sex of the child by the objects that they are holding in the picture. There is a large collection of religious sculptures upstairs as well as a large library full of books and manuscripts. The most valuable of these is the Brevarium Mayer van den Bergh which isn’t on display as it is too fragile. They have computers in the reading room where you can look at photos of the manuscript instead. It’s an illuminated book from the early 16^th century and was made in Bruges. This museum is definitely worth a visit if you are in Antwerp. 

I had bought a combined ticket for this museum and the Rubenhuis museum (it works out at the same price as just going to Rubenhuis alone) and while I had heard that Rubenhuis wasn’t that good, I decided that I might as well check it out. It’s the house where Rubens lived for much of the time that he was in Antwerp. The house was extensively modified in the 18^th century but they have changed much of it back again. As I didn’t have to go to the ticket office to get a ticket, I missed out on getting the little booklet that tells you about the items in each room and it wasn’t until I got through a few rooms and saw others with it that I realised that and had to backtrack and get one. The items are just numbered and you have to get either the audioguide or free booklet to find out about them. The focus of the museum is on the artworks and the items rather than being about Rubens’ life or life in Antwerp in the 17^th century. 

The first room has some interesting prints of what the house used to look like in both Rubens’ time and after the next owner had done renovations. It also has some prints of Rubens’ country house (that’s how much money he was raking in!) He was married twice and his second wife was only 16 when he married her (he was 53). She did end up a very wealthy widow at only 26 though. In the dining room there is a portrait of her from when they married. This room also has a ridiculously displayed item. On the table behind a rope barrier is a little enamel dish in a small glass case. The booklet talks about the inside of the dish so of course you want to look into it. So standing on tippy toes, you lean forward so that you can see into the case properly and the proximity alarm goes off and the guards all come running. In the hour that I was in the museum, the alarm went off at least 5 times. 

Rubens’ gallery is an interesting room where Rubens kept his art collection with works from his contemporaries and his collection of Italian busts. He had one end of the room made as a half dome so that he could display his Italian works in an Italian style setting. The next owner actually converted this room to a chapel. 

Upstairs there are more rooms with paintings either of Rubens or by Rubens and his studio. There is one very odd one in a bedroom which is a death bed portrait of a child. Many people didn’t get a chance to have a portrait painted of their child during their life so for a while there was a trend to have death bed portraits done if the child died early. The artist would go to the bedside and they would have only one day to make some sketches before the child was buried and would then paint in their studios. 

Next to the bedroom was the linen room. It’s hard to believe that bedsheets and table cloths were important enough to warrant their own room. It was one of the most important duties of a lady to ensure that the linen was properly pressed and stored in a big cupboard in this room. They seriously needed to get out more!

You cross over the courtyard into the other half of the house which is where Rubens had his studio for painting. None of it is still set up and they just have paintings displayed in the rooms. His painting of the Annunciation is in the studio and is really poorly displayed. It has bad lighting with lots of reflections and you can’t stand far enough away from it to see the whole thing at once because of a display board in the middle of the room. This room does have some interesting works by other artists that Rubens has touched up to make them more to his taste. You wonder how many paintings out there have had the same done to them. You end in the garden which is behind the house and is done in a style popular in the 17^th century. By the time I finished here it was nearly 5pm so I couldn’t visit anywhere else, so I headed back towards the hostel. I had a traditional Belgian dinner of stoofvlees (beef and beer stew) and friets. The stoofvlees looks like dog food but actually tastes quite good. 

My final day in Antwerp was busy because I wanted to head to Bruges around lunchtime and I still had three places left to visit. I started with St Andrew’s as it was the furthest away. When I arrived I thought that they must have been having a service as there was a man talking in a very hellfire and brimstone kind of way but it turned out that he was just giving a tour to some students. Obviously he wasn’t working off the brochure that I had. The main reason to visit this church is the baroque pulpit. And it really is impressive. It was built in the 19^th century and it really takes the cake as far as pulpits go. It doesn’t just have animals and angels and plants like the one in the cathedral, it has a full sized dinghy with two men  and a full set of fishing nets in it as well as a life sized figure of Jesus. 

Other than the pulpit the church has a couple of other interesting features. Around two of the altars are the marble balustrades that were built to keep some space around the altar clear. The priest would stand inside the balustrade and the members of the guild would stand around the outside for the prayers. 

Next I headed back to the Church of St Carolus Borromeus. It was built in the 17^th century and is the only purely baroque church in Antwerp. When it was built, it was described as the 8^th wonder of the world. Much of the church was designed by Rubens and it originally had 39 ceiling paintings by him. Unfortunately, the church was damaged by fire in the 18^th century and the paintings lost. One of the side chapels has somber (by baroque standards anyway) decorations as the church was slapped on the wrist by Rome for the amount of money that they had spent on the building. Of course it was the height of the counter-reformation in Belgium and they wanted to build something impressive. The highlight is the Mary Chapel which is on the right side of the church. It was designed and partially decorated by Rubens and his studio. It has a stucco ceiling, life sized statues, carved marble, painting, dark wooden carvings, the full baroque collection really. 

My last stop was at Rockoxhuis which is a small museum which houses the collection of Nicolas Rockox who was a close friend and patron of Rubens. He was the mayor of Antwerp for many years and a very wealthy man. The museum is owned by a Belgian bank and is surprisingly cheap to visit (only 2.50 to get in and 2.50 for either a guide book or audioguide). Rockox kept a good inventory of all his works and they have used this to try and reacquire many of the works that he once owned. Some of the larger Rubens and more famous works have ended up in more wealthy museums but they have managed to re buy some of the smaller pieces. They have also bought furniture that would be very similar to that originally in the house. Originally two separate houses, Rockox bought both and created one large building with a courtyard in the middle. It really looks like a house that was lived in and I found it much nicer than the more expensive Rubenhuis. 

Then I headed back to the hostel, grabbed all my stuff and headed back to the station to head to Bruges. Annoyingly, in Belgium you can only buy tickets from the machines using cards and if you want to pay cash, you have to join the queues in the travel centre instead.