Oldmasters Museum
The Oldmasters Museum is an art museum in the Royal Quarter of Brussels, Belgium, dedicated to Old Master European painters of the 15th to the 18th centuries, with some later works. It is one of the constituent museums of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
The museum has a large and internationally important collection of Netherlandish art, mostly from the Southern Netherlands that mostly equate to modern Belgium. For example, there are valuable panels by the Flemish Primitives. There are also significant paintings and sculptures from other parts of Europe.
The museum was founded in 1801 by Napoleon. It was formerly called the Royal Museum of Ancient Art. It is housed in the main building of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts located at 3, rue de la Régence/Regentschapsstraat. This site is served by the tram stop Royale/Koning.
History
Early history
The museum is part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, a management body controlling several museums in Brussels. This institution was founded on 1 September 1801 by Napoleon and opened in 1803 as the Museum of Fine Arts of Brussels, occupying fourteen rooms of the former Palace of Charles of Lorraine, known as the "Old Court".The first collection, the core of the current collections of Ancient Art, consisted of a selection of "old deposits", works of art seized by the French Republic but abandoned, increased by two shipments from Paris, and returned works taken away by the Republic. Later, during the Dutch period, King William I of the Netherlands sponsored an expansion of the collection and had two wings built on the current Place du Musée/Museumplein. Bought by the Belgian State from the City of Brussels, these collections form the embryo of Belgian artistic and literary heritage that will gradually be concentrated in the area.
The works of the Old Masters were finally moved from the Palace of Charles of Lorraine to the Rue de la Régence/Regentschapsstraat in 1887, giving a new purpose to Alphonse Balat's Palace of Fine Arts, which had opened in 1880. On that occasion, the museum was renamed to the Royal Museum of Ancient Art.
20th and 21st centuries
The museum continued to expand in subsequent years, benefitting from increases through purchases, donations or bequests. In 1914, the De Grez donation enriched the collection with more than 4,000 drawings dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, notably by Hendrick Goltzius, Jacob de Gheyn II, and Rembrandt, to name a few. Other important acquisitions included the Delia Faille de Leverghem donation, as well as the Delporte-Livrauw and Goldschmidt bequests.The museum's redevelopment by the architect from 1923 to 1930 allowed a new presentation of the collections. The extension of the Museum of Ancient Art combined with that of the National Archives of Belgium, behind the façades of the former Palace of National Industry, allowed the creation of a new set of rooms and an auditorium. Planned in 1962 by the architects Roland Delers and Jacques Bellemans, it was inaugurated in phases in 1972 and 1974. Towards the Place Royale, the Hôtel Argenteau, the Hôtel Gresham and the Hôtel Altenloh were incorporated in turn in 1965, 1967 and 1969 respectively. An in-depth renovation of Balat's palace was carried out in successive stages from 1977. The complex was inaugurated in 1984.
By the 2020s, the museum had been renamed again to the Oldmasters Museum, officially expressed in the Belgian bilingual style as Musée Oldmasters Museum. The appropriation and inventive reshaping of the English two-word term "Old Masters" was thought to work well in a Belgian context, and for anglophone tourists, as the museum's collection is rich in the Netherlandish paintings from before 1800 for which the term was coined.
Collection
The Oldmasters Museum has an extensive collection of European paintings, sculptures and drawings from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The bulk of the collection is formed around Flemish painting from the 15th to the 17th centuries and is presented in chronological order. The museum houses a comprehensive collection of early Netherlandish paintings with important works of masters such as Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Hugo van der Goes, Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling and Hieronymus Bosch. The Italian and French schools are also represented, notably by Carlo Crivelli, and the Master of the Annunciation of Aix-en-Provence.The 16th-century rooms begin with the Bruges and Antwerp schools of the beginning of the century: Gerard David, Quentin Matsys, and Joos van Cleve, before moving on to the Antwerp Mannerists and Romanists: Jan Gossaert known as Mabuse, and Bernard van Orley. Also featured are the first so-called genre painters: Joachim Patinier, Henri Bles, Jan van Hemessen, Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Bueckelaer.
The museum houses the world's second-largest collection of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder with masterpieces such as The Census at Bethlehem, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, and an early glue-size on cloth painting depicting the.
The Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a public favourite, whose attribution to Pieter Bruegel the Elder is however doubted by experts today. For English-speakers, it is one of the museum's most famous works, if only because of W. H. Auden's poem Musée des Beaux Arts. Numerous copies attributed to Bruegel's son and follower Pieter Bruegel the Younger are part of the collection as well, as are works of Jan Bruegel the Elder and other representatives of the Bruegel dynasty.
The museum has an important collection of works from the 17th-century Flemish School. Peter Paul Rubens and his workshop is represented with more than twenty works. Several are altarpieces from former churches and monasteries in Brussels and the surrounding area. Rubens' way of using oil on panel to make studies after nature, and sketches or modelli for commissions executed with the help of workshop assistants, is illustrated by the ample collection of oil sketches by his own hand.
The Flemish School of the 17th century is further represented with works of Jacob Jordaens, Anthony van Dyck, Frans Snyders, Theodoor van Loon, Theodoor van Thulden, Gaspar de Crayer, Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Antoon Sallaert, Denijs van Alsloot, David Teniers the Younger, Adriaen Brouwer and many more.
The Dutch school of the 17th century is represented with paintings by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Abraham Bloemaert, Jan Asselijn, Melchior de Hondecoeter, Meindert Hobbema, Salomon van Ruisdael, Jacob van Ruisdael, Gerard Dou, Pieter de Hooch, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter, Rachel Ruysch, Gabriel Metsu, Nicolaes Berchem, Nicolas Maes, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Emanuel de Witte, Adriaen van Ostade and many more.
The French and Italian schools of the 16th to the 18th century are represented with works of Corneille de Lyon, Philippe de Champaigne, Simon Vouet, Pierre Mignard, Federico Barocci, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and others. The museum has the prime version of Apollo and Marsyas by Jusepe de Ribera.
The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David is an iconic work, and his Mars Being Disarmed by Venus was his last painting, produced in Brussels. Gustaf Wappers' huge Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830, painted very soon after the event, is a famous evocation of it.
Building
Exterior
The main building that now houses the Oldmasters Museum was built as the Palace of Fine Arts. It was designed by the architect Alphonse Balat and funded by King Leopold II. Balat was the king's principal architect, and the building was one part of the king's vast construction projects for Belgium. It was opened in 1880, and has housed the Royal Museum of Ancient Art since 1887 following the move there of the works of the Old Masters. Built in an eclectic style of classical inspiration, it stands as an example of the Beaux-Arts use of themed statuary to assert the building's identity and meaning.The building's extensive programme of architectural sculpture includes four allegorical figures, symbolising Music, Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, atop the four main piers, the work of sculptors Guillaume de Groot, Louis Samain, Joseph Geefs, and, respectively. The gilded finial, The Genius of the Arts, originally part of the Monument to the Dynasty in Laeken, was also designed by de Groot. The three rondels representing Rubens, Van Ruysbroek, and Jean de Bologne, symbolising Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture respectively, are the work of, Antoine-Félix Bouré and. The two bas-relief panels symbolise Music by Thomas Vincotte, and Industrial Arts by. The two bronze groups on pedestals represent The Crowning of Art by Paul de Vigne, and The Teaching of Art by Charles van der Stappen.
On the side of the building, a memorial commemorates five members of the National Royalist Movement, a resistance group killed during the liberation of Brussels on 3–4 September 1944. Alongside the building's western face is a sculpture garden, landscaped in 1992, with works by Aristide Maillol, Emilio Greco, Bernhard Heiliger and.
Interior
Accessible via the Rue de la Régence, the vast rectangular main hall—formerly called the Sculpture Hall and currently the Forum—was designed as an interior courtyard overlooked by a colonnaded walkway and topped by a skylight. It features a series of paintings and sculptures, including one by Constantin Meunier and another by Guillaume Geefs. It also gives access to a café with a terrace, open in fine weather, overlooking the sculpture garden and offering a panoramic view. On each long side are two arched niches each housing an allegorical statue: Greek Art and Gothic Art by Charles Van der Stappen, Roman Art and Renaissance Art by Antoine van Rasbourg.At the far end, in line with the central hall, is the Balat Staircase, consisting of four straight flights, covered by a vault supported by two groups of Ionic columns, and lit by a high arched window. A marble plaque in memory of Alphonse Balat, by Thomas Vinçotte, was affixed in 1902. In the annex on the right—housing the Rubens Room in the centre—is the Royal Staircase: a two-flight staircase with a wrought iron banister, preceded by twin Doric columns, under a gilded coffered ceiling decorated with Leopold II's monogram.
Adjacent to the Balat Staircase is the modern extension comprising a large auditorium, and on three levels, a complex of 53 exhibition rooms, documentary rooms, foyers and temporary exhibition space.