Flemish Art in Context

Session 1: Saturday, October 15, 10:30 am

In this introductory lecture, Katharina Van Cauteren, Chief of Staff of The Phoebus Foundation and organizing curator of the exhibition Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, will take the audience on a journey across more than three centuries of Flemish art and history.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the small patch of land that we now call Flanders was the center of the world. Cities such as Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent were the New York, London, and Hong Kong of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. An art and luxury market soon emerged here that had no equal anywhere else North of the Alps. Van Cauteren will tell this exceptional story through the masterpieces of artists from the Southern Netherlands such as Hans Memling and Quinten Metsys, Jan Gossaert, Peter Paul Rubens, Antoon Van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens.

Session 3: Saturday, November 19, 2 pm

In this session, Geoffrey Shamos, Director of the Vicki Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver, will examine early modern cabinets of curiosity, which often included an assortment of objects from nature and science alongside art, antiquities, and ethnographic artifacts. Intended to illustrate the profound diversity of natural splendor and human artistry, these collections demonstrated the reach, knowledge, and wealth of their patrons, many of whom shared a desire for the rare and esoteric.

The exploration of distant lands supplied an abundance of hitherto unknown specimens that were organized based on superficial resemblances that were thought to reveal underlying connections between objects. Cabinets of curiosity cultivated a sense of wonder by bringing together captivating items and displaying the vastness of earthly creation.

Session 4: Saturday, December 10, 2 pm

In the 17th century, following upon the “discovery” of the Americas in the 1500s, European artists, patrons, and viewers found themselves in an exciting - and disconcerting - wave of globalization. Whether due to the solidification of international trading routes, European countries’ relentless pursuit of colonialism, and//or a desire for religious dominance, Flemish and European artists in the 1600s operated in a world marked by encounters with the unknown.

Led by Rebecca Tucker, a professor of art at Colorado College, participants will examine through case studies how European artists imagined and exploited the opportunities of a global marketplace for art. We’ll also consider the ways that European artworks served and furthered political, social, and religious ideologies in the tumultuous “Golden Age” of the 17th century.