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and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and then Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, these artists and so many others later made Antwerp the focal point of the Flemish baroque. Now, with René Magritte, James Ensor and Luc Tuymans the highlights are wide-ranging and growing. Antwerp’s painters, sculptors and stained- glass artists, embroiderers, goldsmiths and silversmiths joined together to form the Guild of Saint Luke in 1382, holding “their meetings and festivities in a ‘Painter’s Chamber’”. By 1663 the association had founded an academy


offering a comprehensive curriculum of humanities, sciences and fine arts, and in 1773 the guild’s collection of art was inherited by the academy. Tis was looted by the French in 1794, but it was Napoleon who, by imperial decree, founded the Antwerp Museum, and in 1815, following the battle of Waterloo a substantial proportion of the stolen work arrived back in the city. Te 1817 catalogue lists 127 items – a small collection, but of the highest quality. Te nucleus comprised works from the second half of the 16th century and the 17th


century, with Rubens as the crowning glory. Tis was later supplemented by a number of generous bequests and legacies. From 1850 onwards the academy began an ‘Academic Corps’ with leading artists required to donate both a work of art and a portrait when they joined. Te “academicians’ museum”, as it was called steadily, developed into a genuine collection of contemporary art. Tis grew with purchases at the Salon from 1873 by which time the upshot of all this growth was predictable. Tey had run out of space.


SEBASTIAN VAN DAMME


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