Thematic sites

The thematic websites of the Flemish Art Collection (VKC) bring together art and research from various Flemish museums. Each site delves deeper into the history and the work of one artist or art movement. At the same time, the sites bring together the most important sources for the art history researcher.

Flemish Primitives

Painting in the 15th and early 16th centuries in the Southern Netherlands is a brilliant highlight of art history. It was an economic and artistic heyday. The so-called 'Flemish primitives' work diligently to depict the visible world in as much detail as possible.

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Rogier van der Weyden (circle of), 'The Virgin of the Carnation', c. 1480, MSK Ghent

Baroque in the Southern Netherlands

From the early 18th century, the term 'Baroque' is used to describe the imagery of princely absolutism, the Church Counter-Reformation and bourgeois moralism. Baroque art, through its opulence, aims to convince the viewer of the content of a message...

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Gaspar de Crayer, 'The Coronation of Saint Rosalia', 1644, MSK Ghent

James Ensor

James Ensor's work is extremely varied and, since post-modernism, surprisingly topical again. Ensor is therefore a true 'artist's artist' who has not stolen his international reputation.

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James Ensor, 'Children at their Morning Toilet', 1886, MSK Ghent - Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap

George Minne

George Minne is undoubtedly one of the best-known symbolist sculptors in Europe. With his modern spirituality, he strives for an art that transcends the senses and expresses what moves the soul.

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George Minne, 'Fountain with Kneeling Youths Youths', c. 1905 Basin, c. 1927–1930 (copy), MSK Ghent

Abstract modernism

This is the story of the pioneers of abstraction in the first half of the 20th century until its end in the 1970s. Modernism strives for innovation and leads to one of the most important developments in art since the Renaissance.

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Gustave De Smet, 'The Good House', 1926, MSK Ghent