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Celebrating Rubens - The 450th anniversary of the ‘Prince of Painters’ in Antwerp
5
days
from
A$5,070
Book today with a deposit from
A$761
18th - 22nd October 2027
Tour highlights
- Celebrate the 450th anniversary of Rubens’s birth with special exhibitions exploring the artist, his world and his extraordinary legacy.
- See Rubens’s masterpieces in the city’s finest museums and in the churches for which many were originally painted.
- Stay in Antwerp, a richly rewarding city of magnificent Baroque churches, outstanding museums and handsome gabled streets.
- Led by Ben van Beneden, former director of the Rubenshuis and a leading authority on Rubens and his circle.
Few painters have matched Rubens for sheer physical vitality. His paintings and oil sketches move like weather systems – muscle, drapery and light in perpetual motion – and four centuries on they still stop visitors in their tracks. It is this, more than any biographical fact, that explains why Antwerp is marking his 450th birthday with such ambition.
On 20th August 1566, the tide of iconoclasm swept through Antwerp, then the commercial heart of northern Europe. Out of a small medieval nucleus on the banks of the Scheldt, the city had grown into a major European metropolis. Trade brought new ideas, which through a progressive printing and book-dealing culture found an audience among Antwerp’s well-connected and well-informed citizens. After the devastating attacks on religious imagery in Antwerp’s churches, a period of Calvinist rule from 1577 to 1585 would further strip them of their fabled treasures.
A decisive reversal of fortune followed in 1585, when the city fell to the armies of Catholic Spain. A massive exodus ensued, with many of the educated refugees bringing specialised skills to Europe’s newly emerging Protestant capitals. Firmly under Spanish rule, Antwerp reasserted itself as a northern bulwark of Habsburg Catholicism and became a beacon of the triumphant Counter-Reformation – a superb stage on which to display the Catholic Church’s renewed emphasis on religious imagery.
Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, in Siegen, to a family originally from Antwerp. His learned father had been exiled for his Protestant faith and died there. After his death, Rubens’s mother returned to Antwerp with three of her children, among them the ten-year-old Peter Paul. Two decades later, after travelling extensively in Italy, Rubens himself returned to Antwerp with a command of colour, anatomy and composition matched by almost no one north of the Alps – and he put it to use immediately, and on an enormous scale.
His works are alive with movement and emotion of every shade. There is power and vigour in his output, and sometimes violence, but also tenderness; vast schemes of great formal grandeur covering acres of canvas and panel, but also expressiveness and poignancy. Very few artists have achieved such technical mastery – a breathtaking mixture of panache and precision, broad, vigorous brushstrokes laid beside the touches of a miniaturist. Rubens was, in some ways, the last great artist in a Renaissance tradition that raised painting to the status of poetry: as erudite and meaningful as it was beautiful. That same tradition shaped his status as a gentleman among courtiers and kings. He undertook semi-official diplomatic missions on behalf of the Spanish Habsburgs, travelling between Brussels, Madrid and London, and was knighted by Charles I.
In 2027, Antwerp celebrates its most famous son with a series of exhibitions, interspersed on this tour with visits to the churches, houses and collections that hold his finest work. The seventeenth-century streetscape of Antwerp survives remarkably intact, and few cities in the Low Countries reward a week of walking quite so richly. From Rubens’s garden and the surviving architecture of his home and studio to his tomb, this tour offers the rare chance to step inside the artist’s universe at the moment the city that made his reputation is once again putting him centre stage.
Itinerary
Depart mid-morning from London St Pancras by Eurostar for Brussels, and from there take the coach to Antwerp. The great port on the Scheldt has an abundance of historic buildings, museums and churches of the highest interest. There is some time to settle into the hotel before an introductory lecture and dinner. First of four nights in Antwerp.
We begin with a morning visit to the garden of the Rubenshuis, which Rubens designed himself as a formal Italianate setting for his house and studio. The rest of the day is dedicated to Antwerp’s finest churches and the works of Rubens in situ: not least the vast Gothic cathedral where four of his most powerful paintings hang, including The Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross. In the afternoon visit the newly restored St Paul’s Church, home to The Flagellation of Christ, and St James’s Church, Rubens’s parish church and the site of his tomb and burial chapel.
Morning visit to the church of St Charles Borromeo, its Jesuit façade inspired by the Gesù in Rome, with sumptuous decoration partly attributed to Rubens. Continue to the Snijders & Rockoxhuis, former home of Rubens’s close friend and patron Nicolaas Rockox, with excellent furnishings and paintings, as well as the special exhibition: Rubens’s Lost Notebooks. The rest of the afternoon is free for independent exploration.
The UNESCO-listed Plantin-Moretus Museum presents Rubens’s work as a book designer and illustrator for his childhood friend Balthasar Moretus, head of the family printing house. Spend the afternoon at the KMSKA, or Royal Museum of Fine Arts. Its impressive collection includes works by Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and, of course, Rubens. In 2027 the museum will also host the special exhibition: Rubens and the World.
En route to Brussels, stop in Mechelen to see Rubens’s The Miraculous Draught of Fishes in the Church of Our-Lady-across-the-Dyle. In Brussels visit the Museum of Old Masters, part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts and one of the best collections of Netherlandish painting in Europe, including many of Rubens’s masterpieces. Take the Eurostar from Brussels to London St Pancras, arriving in the early evening.
Expert speaker
Mr Benjamin Van Beneden
Ben van Beneden is the former director of the Rubenshuis (Rubens House), the home and studio of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp, and a leading authority on the art of Rubens. He is co-author of the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, the catalogue raisonné of Rubens’s oeuvre.
More tours led by Mr Benjamin Van Beneden
Practicalities
Price, per person. Two sharing: A$5,580 or A$5,070 without Eurostar. Single occupancy: A$6,300 or A$5,790 without Eurostar.
Coach travel for transfers and excursions; accommodation as described below; breakfasts and 3 dinners with wine; admission charges; all tips for restaurant staff, drivers and guides; all taxes; the services of the lecturer and tour manager.
Hotel FRANQ, Antwerp: a 4-star hotel located in a former bank near the cathedral. Single occupancy rooms are doubles for sole use.
This tour involves a lot of walking in the city centre, often on uneven or cobbled ground, and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Standing around in galleries and museums is also a feature. Average distance by coach per day: 14 miles.
Between 8 and 18 participants.
Before booking, please refer to Smartraveller to ensure you are happy with the travel advice for the destination(s) you are visiting. As a British company we follow the advice of the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.
Dates & prices
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2027
Date
Speaker
Price
Date:
18th - 22nd October 2027
Speaker:
Mr Benjamin Van Beneden
Price:
from A$5,070
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