An Exhibition to Make us Wonder, Learn and Connect
Peeter Neeffs II (1620-1675), Gillis van Tilborch (about 1625-1678), Elegant Couple in a Collector’s Art Cabinet, 1652, and about 1675, oil on canvas, 131 x 158.3 x 8.6 cm. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
On view from June 8 to October 20, 2024, the exhibition Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools transports us to an extraordinary period of history, between 1400 and 1700, that shaped the world we know today. Organized around themes that have fascinated humankind from time immemorial, it showcases the celebrated Flemish art collection of The Phoebus Foundation (Antwerp, Belgium), which is complemented by several major works from the MMFA’s own Flemish collection. Chloé M. Pelletier, who curated the Montreal presentation, describes one among many stories told by the exhibition, highlighting certain key works and the subtle yet marvellous links between them.
Chloé M. Pelletier
The early modern period was an age of transformation. In the years between the Black Death (about 1345) and end the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), European cities boomed into dense cosmopolitan centres, Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation, the printing press fanned its flames, navigators sailed and mapped the world and merchants, backed by global empires, commodified it. While this period saw many suffer from oppression, enslavement and war, it also welcomed a wave of technological innovations, independence movements and lasting activism around religious freedoms. Flemish artists were there every step of the way, bearing witness and providing people with images to guide and enrich their lives. Their stories are as complex and interconnected as the world in which they lived.
The exhibition is organized thematically and follows a loose chronology. Successive sections dedicated respectively to religion, portraiture, morality, classicism, global expansion, politics and collection practices come together to tell the story of Flanders in this dynamic historical moment. The final gallery takes its inspiration from the Kunstkammer or “collector’s cabinet,” impressive private art collections that began to appear in Flemish middle- and upper-class homes in the 16th century. Such collections, which were a by-product of a booming economy and the first commercial art market in European history, can be seen in two works in the exhibition, including the painting by Gillis van Tilborch and Peeter Neeffs II, pictured above.
In these floor-to-ceiling installations, works of diverse genres, styles and materials are placed in dialogue with one another, creating unexpected connections. Inspired by this spirit of connectivity, I wanted to explore in this article a diversion from the exhibition’s chronological and thematic structure, instead linking works around subtle affinities of material, narrative, and form.
Symbolic detail
In this Nativity painting from about 1480, the Virgin Mary has just given birth to the Christ child, who lies on the hem of her dress encircled by prayerful angels. Mary’s older husband, Saint Joseph, looks over the newborn and holds a candle in his left hand. This refers to a vision of the 14th-century mystic Saint Bridget of Sweden, in which Saint Joseph brought a candle to illuminate the manger where Mary was labouring.1 In the world of the painting, Saint Joseph’s candle symbolizes earthly light, while the silvery glow illuminating Mary and the Christ child represents divine light, a manifestation of God himself. The artist, Hans Memling, leaves no room for doubt as to which shines brightest.
By 1465, Memling had left his native Germany to set up shop in Bruges, a hub for artists, merchants and bankers alike. There, he developed a reputation for his dazzling, refined oil paintings of religious subjects. Oil paint, a relatively new medium for European artists during Memling’s time, was appreciated for its slow dry time and translucency, which made it possible to blend passages smoothly, achieve high levels of detail, and create luminous surface effects through washes of colour. Memling’s jewel-like Nativity that seems to glow from within showcases the medium at its finest.
Hans Memling and Workshop (1430/1440-1494), The Nativity, about 1480, oil on panel, 112.7 x 86.7 x 7.9 cm. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
Oil paint, an innovation
Writing in the 16th century, the Italian artist and historian Giorgio Vasari propagated the myth that oil painting was invented by the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, and that it spread throughout Europe via travelling artists, namely Antonello da Messina.2 While oil painting had been used for over a millennium in parts of Asia, Vasari’s origin myth was widely believed by Renaissance Europeans and even commemorated in a widely published 1590s print series called The Nova Reperta [The New Inventions of Modern Times].
Plate 14 in the series, The Invention of Oil Paint, offers a delightful, if idealized, glimpse into the Renaissance studio. A master artist – identified in the accompanying inscription as Jan van Eyck (“magister Eyckius”) – stands at his canvas in fine garments. Around him, apprentices and assistants busy themselves with tasks, including making oil paints by grinding pigments into linseed oil.
Philips Galle and Workshop (1537-1612), after Johannes Stradanus (1523–1605), Invention of Oil Paint, from the series “Nova Reperta” [New Inventions of Modern Times], about 1590, engravings, 32.7 x 42.7 x 4.8 cm. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
Produced in the workshop of Philips Galle after designs by the Italian-based Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus, the Nova Reperta depicts 19 major discoveries and inventions that defined modern civilization. To a reader of our time, it might be surprising to see oil painting listed alongside such revolutionary phenomena as the invention of gunpowder or even the “discovery” of America. Moreover, the opening print of the series features a female allegory of America being confronted by the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who has just disembarked from his ship. The two lock eyes in an arresting moment of mutual encounter. The Latin inscription below reads, “He called her but once and thenceforth she was always awake.”
Philips Galle and Workshop (1537-1612), after Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605), Amerigo Vespucci Rediscovers America, from the series “Nova Reperta” [New Inventions of Modern Times], about 1590, engraving, 32.7 x 42.7 x 4.8 cm. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
Nature and the body
The allegorized female body was a common feature in European art. Women could embody entire continents, oceans, cities or buildings, or even abstract concepts, such as Vanity or Fortune (see Gilles Coignet’s Allegory of the Fortuna Marina). The male body was also deployed for allegorical purposes, as can be seen below in Hendrick de Clerck and Denijs van Alsloot’s dazzling oil-on-copper painting The Garden of Eden with the Four Elements.
Staged within a paradisiacal landscape, the composition includes three vignettes from the story of Adam and Eve as well as allegories of Earth, Water, Air and Fire – the four elements understood to comprise the natural world. Following Classical tradition, the terrestrial elements of Earth and Water are represented as female, while Air and Fire are shown as male. This gendered binary reflects scientific understandings of the time, which held that female biology was cold and wet in nature, whereas male biology was predominantly hot and dry.3
Gilles Coignet (about 1538-1599), Allegory of the Fortuna Marina, about 1560, oil on panel, 87.5 x 58 x 3.5 cm. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
Hendrick de Clerck (1560-1630), Denijs van Alsloot (about 1570 – about 1627), The Garden of Eden with the Four Elements, 1613, oil on copper, 82 x 97.7 x 5.9 cm. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium
In the painting, Earth and Water recline on a lush terrain amongst a diverse array of plants and animals from around the world, including a guinea pig from South America and a Conus marmoreus shell from the Indian Ocean. Floating above them, Air extends his hand to a tropical bird, one of many species in his retinue. Fire, meanwhile, clutches a lightning bolt and a torch. God the Father reigns down from above, as if giving order to the natural world.
Evoking the four corners of the world, such imagery of the elements as a harmonious and abundantly diverse landscape unified under Christianity would have carried political weight during this time: the Spanish Crown, which governed the Southern Netherlands, was making every effort to expand and strengthen its empire across five continents. Like every work of art, this painting opens a window onto a particular world view and political context, if only we know how to look.
While the works discussed above do not share the same artists, patrons or styles, they tie in to one another in poignant ways. Strung together by points of convergence from oil paint to allegory, they tell the story of Flanders in an age of transformation. With 137 objects in the exhibition, there are many more connecting threads to find, and ever more stories to discover. I hope that the one presented here entices you to find your own as you explore the exhibition.
1 Saint Bridget of Sweden (about 1303-1391), Revelationes Coelestes, Chapter 21.
2 Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.185-90.
3 For a study of this tradition as well as some foundational bibliography on the medical history, see Gail Kern Paster, “Unbearable coldness of Female Being: Women’s Imperfection and the Humoral Economy,” in English Literary Renaissance, vol. 28 No. 3 (Autumn 1998), p. 416-440
Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools: Three Hundred Years of Flemish Masterworks
June 8 – October 20, 2024
Credits and curatorial team
An exhibition co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium, in collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren, Chief of Staff of The Phoebus Foundation Chancellery. The Montreal presentation is curated by Chloé M. Pelletier, Curator of European Art (before 1800) at the MMFA.
Its presentation at the MMFA has been made possible thanks to the support of the Museum’s Major Public Partner, the Government of Canada. The MMFA also thanks VISITFLANDERS and the representation of Flanders in the United States and Canada, as well as Tourisme Montréal and Warwick Le Crystal – Montreal hotel for their collaboration.
The Museum further acknowledges the invaluable contribution of its official sponsor, Denalt Paints, and its media partners Bell, La Presse and The Gazette.
The exhibition was funded in part by the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Government of Quebec.
The Museum’s major exhibitions receive funding from the Paul G. Desmarais Fund.
The MMFA wishes to underscore the generosity of those who support its programming, in particular the donors to the Philanthropic Circles of its Foundation.
