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Exhibition: Guests in the Rockox House Museum

And something permanent for everyone to enjoy

 

Exhibition from 24 November 2009 to …

‘Guests in the Rockox House Museum’
Seven sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works on long-term loan from the Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, the Antwerp Cathedral and a private collection.

Antoon Van Dyck (1599-1641), ‘Joannes Malderus’, oil on panel, Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 402

Van Dyck was an important painter of portraits during the second quarter of the seventeenth century. A talent of his was to give particular character to his portraits. The portrait of Bishop Malderus was painted in 1626-1628 and its Rubenesque traits set it apart from other Van Dyck portraits of this period, which appear to be much less static.

Hendrik van Balen (1575-1632), ‘The Holy Family with Angels’, shortly after 1622, oil on panel, Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 361-364 (side panels), the Antwerp Cathedral, inv. JVDN E28 (central panel)

Hendrik van Balen was influenced by Rubens, whom he held in admiration, and often worked with both the elder and the younger Jan Breughel, as well as with Joost de Momper.
This triptych commemorates the merchant Filip Heemsen (+1634) and his wife Anna van Eelen (+1622).

Cornelis de Vos (1584/5-1651),

• ‘St. Norbert and the Restitution of the Monstrance and the Holy Vessels’, 1630, oil on canvas, Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 107
  De Vos was the most important painter of the bourgeois portrait during the Antwerp Baroque. Influenced by Rubens and Van Dyck, he nevertheless developed his own style. From the 1620s on, he blossomed as a portrait painter, earning international fame. The painting here contains a number of individual portraits, too. St. Norbert, in Premonstratensian choir habit, with mitre and patriarchal cross, is accompanied by five fellow brothers and a nobleman, whom we recognize as Nicolaas Rockox.
• ‘Portrait of a Lady’, oil on canvas, private collection
  This portrait of an unknown young woman is a typical example of the portraitist art of De Vos during the first half of the 1620s.

Peter Paul Rubens, ‘Doubting Thomas’, 1613-1615, oil on panel, Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 307-308-310

Rockox commissioned this triptych in 1613. Its side panels carry his portrait and that of his wife, Adriana Perez, and it was intended for the chapel that he had built in the Franciscan church in Antwerp.

Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527 – 1606/1609?) and Gillis Mostaert (1528-1598), ‘The Judgement of Zaleucus’, oil on panel, private collection

Hans Vredeman de Vries was a renowned Renaissance painter, fascinated by perspective, but was even more an architect. He introduced the Italian style of building north of the Alps.
Gillis Mostaert (1528-1598) looked to his contemporary, Pieter Breughel the Elder (ca. 1520-1569), as his great source of inspiration. His paintings are often to be interpreted as being critical and moralizing. The setting with the judgement of Zaleucus is from his hand.

© KBC-Rockoxhuis

Paul Vredeman de Vries (1567- after 1630?), ‘Daniël Demanding Justice for Susannah’, signed? with monogram 'PVR 1613' lower right, oil on panel, private collection

Paul Vredeman de Vries was a son and pupil of Hans Vredeman de Vries, and was likewise fascinated by perspective and played with space. In his paintings, too, architecture often dominates the iconography.

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And something permanent for everyone to enjoy

Audio-visual presentation
‘Rockox and his time’

This updated, digitalized presentation provides a comprehensive overview of the fascinating age in which Rockox lived; of his political, artistic and social influence on Antwerp from the Fall of Antwerp (1585), with the subsequent closure of the Schelde, to the Peace of Munster (1648), which marked the final separation of Northern and Southern Netherlands.
Dutch, French, English and German Duration: 25 minutes

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