Cities of Belgium: Grant Allen's Historical GuidesAllen, Grant
History
Cities of Belgium: Grant Allen's Historical Guides
Allen, Grant
Belgium -- Guidebooks
The room is full of other fine and delicately-finished pictures of the
Dutch School, of which I say nothing, only because they are of the kind
which are to be appreciated by careful examination, and which do not
need explanation or description.
Room K. contains Flemish works of the later School of Rubens and the
beginning of the decadence.
The remaining rooms of the Gallery have =modern pictures=, belonging to
the _historical_ and to the _archaic_ Schools of Antwerp. These works
lie without the scope of the present Guides, but many of them are of the
highest order of merit, and they well deserve attention both for their
own intrinsic excellence and for comparison with the works of the 15th
and early 16th centuries on which they are based. The paintings of Leys
and his followers, mainly in Room T, are especially worth consideration
in this connection. These painters have faithfully endeavoured to revert
to the principles and methods of the great early Flemish Masters, and
though their work has often the almost inevitable faults and failings of
a revival, it cannot fail to interest those who have drunk in the spirit
of Van Eyck and Memling.
On the _ground floor_, a good copy, 413, etc., of the Adoration of the
Lamb at Ghent, useful for filling up the gaps in your knowledge, and
more readily inspected at leisure and from a nearer point of view than
the original. The _portraits_ and _battle scenes_ on the remaining walls
need little comment.
_D_. THE TOWN IN GENERAL
[=Mediæval Antwerp=, now no more, lay within a narrow ring of
walls in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral. Its circumference
formed a rough semi-circle, whose base-line was the Schelde,
while its outer walls may still be traced on a good map about
the Rempart Ste. Catherine and the Rempart du Lombard. This
oldest district still remains on the whole an intricate tangle
of narrow and tortuous streets, with a few ancient buildings.
Later =Renaissance Antwerp= stretched to the limit of the
existing Avenues in their _northern_ part, though the _southern_
portion (from the Place Léopold on) extends beyond the boundary
of the 17th century city, and occupies the site of the huge
demolished Old Citadel, built by Alva. Antwerp, however, has
undergone so many changes, and so few relics of the mediæval age
now survive, that I can hardly apply to its growth the
historical method I have employed in other Belgian towns. It
will be necessary here merely to point out the principal
existing objects of interest, without connecting them into
definite excursions.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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