Oldmasters Museum

The Oldmasters Museum (French: Musée Oldmasters; Dutch: 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 (including Bruegel, Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin, Hieronymus Bosch, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens). 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 (French: Musée royal d'Art ancien; Dutch: Koninklijk Museum voor Oude Kunst). It is housed in the main building of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts (Palace of Fine Arts) located at 3, rue de la Régence/Regentschapsstraat. This site is served by the tram stop Royale/Koning (on lines 92 and 93).
The museum is part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (French: Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Dutch: Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België), 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 (French: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Dutch: Museum voor Schone Kunsten van Brussel), 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 (1798), increased by two shipments from Paris (1802 and 1811), and returned works taken away by the Republic (1815). Later, during the Dutch period, King William I of the Netherlands sponsored an expansion of the collection (1817 and 1819) and had two wings built on the current Place du Musée/Museumplein (the so-called Palace of National Industry, opened in 1830). 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 (French: vieux maîtres, Dutch: oude meesters) 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 (see below), which had opened in 1880 (not to be confused with the current Centre for Fine Arts). On that occasion, the museum was renamed to the Royal Museum of Ancient Art (French: Musée royal d'Art ancien, Dutch: Koninklijk Museum voor Oude Kunst).
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 works 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 (1942) donation, as well as the Delporte-Livrauw (1973) and Goldschmidt (1990) bequests.
The museum's redevelopment by the architect Albert Van Huffel [fr] 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.
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, presented in chronological order. The 15th-century rooms are devoted to so-called Flemish primitives such as Robert Campin (the Master of Flémalle), Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, 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 (possibly Barthélemy d'Eyck).
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, Joachim Bueckelaer, and Huybrecht Beuckeleer. This section ends with a room devoted to Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son Pieter Bruegel the Younger. The museum is also proud of its "Rubens Room", which houses more than twenty paintings by the artist.
Other painters represented in the collection include Lucas Cranach the Elder, Joos de Momper, Frans Snyders, Philippe de Champaigne, Simon Vouet, Jacob Jordaens, Anthony van Dyck, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.
For English-speakers, the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by or after Bruegel, is one of the most famous works, if only because of W. H. Auden's poem Musée des Beaux Arts. Other paintings by Bruegel the Elder are: The Fall of the Rebel Angels, Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap and The Census at Bethlehem, a group only matched in Vienna, as well as many early copies. 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.
The main building that now houses the Oldmasters Museum was built as the Palace of Fine Arts (French: Palais des Beaux-Arts, Dutch: Paleis voor Schone Kunsten). 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 Égide Mélot [fr], 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 van Rasbourg [nl], Antoine-Félix Bouré and Jean Cuypers [fr]. The two bas-relief panels symbolise Music by Thomas Vincotte, and Industrial Arts by Charles Brunin [fr]. 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 Dolf Ledel [fr].
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 (1962–1974) comprising a large auditorium, and on three levels, a complex of 53 exhibition rooms, documentary rooms, foyers and temporary exhibition space.
In English-speaking countries, the museum is best known from W. H. Auden's poem Musée des Beaux Arts ("Museum of Fine Arts"), as it is now called. When Auden first published it in 1929, the poem was titled Palais des Beaux Arts ("Palace of Fine Arts"). At that time, "Palace of Fine Arts" was still commonly used as the name of the imposing 19th-century museum building. After World War II, Auden's various publishers switched to Musée des Beaux Arts as the poem's title. The poem describes, through the use of Bruegel's paintings—notably, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus—humankind's indifference to the suffering of others. It begins: "About suffering they were never wrong/The Old Masters...".