Presented by the Dutch Group with the highly appreciated support of
the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

Ode to Antwerp – the Secrets of the Dutch Masters

Lecture on October 19th 2023 by

Micha Leeflang
Curator of Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht

Almost everyone in the Netherlands in the 17th century had a painting hanging on the wall. They were made in the millions, for every purse and taste. Master painters like Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Jan Steen are still world-famous. Remarkably, though, very few painters were working in the Northern Netherlands before the end of the 16th century, and there was no art market. Where did the artistic explosion come from ?

Holland owed its remarkable flowering, among other things, to thousands of refugees from Antwerp, which was the most important city in the Netherlands at the time. When Catholic Spain recaptured Antwerp in 1585, wealthy Protestant merchants and ambitious artists left for the more tolerant Northern Netherlands in droves. Amsterdam soon replaced Antwerp as a leading economic and artistic centre in north-western Europe.

Dr. Micha Leeflang will tell you more about this important tipping point in history. To this day it influences the similarities and differences between the Dutch and the Flemish.

The lecture commences at 13h and will be preceded by drinks and a sandwich lunch as from 12h.

All profits will go to our humanitarian aid projects