Flemish Art

In this sumptuous volume of encyclopedic breadth, we are treated to a wide-ranging series of essays by an extraordinary group of scholars and specialists on the entire gamut of the arts of Flanders; essays extending from the Middle Ages and reaching across the centuries into our very own 20th. In addition to painting and sculpture, which is what we tend to think of when hearing the term “art”, the 22 distinguished writers discuss architecture, stained glass, illumination, graphic art, furniture, tapestry and textiles, metalwork, ceramics, musical instruments, and the decorative arts. As an indication of the book’s scope, the reach into the 20th century, for instance, discusses such modern masters in painting as Ensor and Khnopff.

No expense was spared in the original production of this volume, as its 592 large pages and more than 400 color illustrations can testify. Further evidence of the respect the book has elicited is in the prefatory essays by Gaston Geens, President of the Flemish Government, and Karel Poma, that government’s Vice President and its Communal Minister of Culture.

Not only are the well-known Flemish painters such as Bruegel, Bosch, van der Weyden, Memling, Van Eyck, and Rubens fully discussed in the essays and represented in the illustrations which accompany them, there are hosts of lesser-known figures included as well, in many fields and representing several centuries, whose fine work is explored and evaluated. The effect of the surprising uncovering of so many great figures is to leave us with a sense of pleasure and a sense of awe that so much beauty has been wrought over the years in so many areas of creative activity in so small an area of Europe as the Flemish land.