The remaining rooms of the Gallery have modern pictures, belonging to the historical and to the archaic Schools of Antwerp. These works lie without the scope of the present Guides, but many of them are of the highest order of merit, and they well deserve attention both for their own intrinsic excellence and for comparison with the works of the 15th and early 16th centuries on which they are based. The paintings of Leys and his followers, mainly in Room T, are especially worth consideration in this connection. These painters have faithfully endeavoured to revert to the principles and methods of the great early Flemish Masters, and though their work has often the almost inevitable faults and failings of a revival, it cannot fail to interest those who have drunk in the spirit of Van Eyck and Memling.
On the ground floor, a good copy, 413, etc., of the Adoration of the Lamb at Ghent, useful for filling up the gaps in your knowledge, and more readily inspected at leisure and from a nearer point of view than the original. The portraits and battle scenes on the remaining walls need little comment.
D. THE TOWN IN GENERAL
[Mediæval Antwerp, now no more, lay within a narrow ring of walls in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral. Its circumference formed a rough semi-circle, whose base-line was the Schelde, while its outer walls may still be traced on a good map about the Rempart Ste. Catherine and the Rempart du Lombard. This oldest district still remains on the whole an intricate tangle of narrow and tortuous streets, with a few ancient buildings. Later Renaissance Antwerp stretched to the limit of the existing Avenues in their northern part, though the southern portion (from the Place Léopold on) extends beyond the boundary of the 17th century city, and occupies the site of the huge demolished Old Citadel, built by Alva. Antwerp, however, has undergone so many changes, and so few relics of the mediæval age now survive, that I can hardly apply to its growth the historical method I have employed in other Belgian towns. It will be necessary here merely to point out the principal existing objects of interest, without connecting them into definite excursions.]
The centre of mediæval Antwerp was the Grand’ Place, which may be reached from the Place Verte, through the little triangular Marché aux Gants, in front of the main façade of the Cathedral. It was, however, so entirely modernized under the Spanish régime that it now possesses very little interest. The W. side of the square is entirely occupied by the Hôtel-de-Ville, a poor Renaissance building, which looks very weak after the magnificent Gothic Town Halls of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, and Louvain. The façade is extremely plain, not to say domestic. The ground floor has an arcade in imitation of Italian rustica work, above which come two stories with Doric and Ionic columns (and Corinthian in the centre); the top floor being occupied by an open loggia, supporting the roof. In the centre, where we might expect a spire, rises a false gable-end, architecturally meaningless. The niche in the gable is occupied by a statue of Our Lady with the Child (1585), the patroness of the city, flanked by allegorical figures of Wisdom and Justice.
The interior has been modernized: but it contains one fine hall, the Salle Leys, decorated with noble archaistic paintings by Baron Leys. It may be visited before 9, or after 4 in the evening (1 franc to the concierge). In the Burgomaster’s Room is also a good Renaissance chimney-piece, from the Abbey of Tongerloo, with reliefs of the Marriage at Cana, the Brazen Serpent, and Abraham’s Sacrifice.
The square contains a few Guild Houses of the 17th century, the best of which is the Hall of the Archers, to the R. of the Hôtel-de-Ville, a handsome and conspicuous building, lately surmounted by a gilt figure of St. George slaying the Dragon, in honour of the patron saint of the Archers. The older Guild Houses, however, were mostly destroyed by the Spaniards. The square, as it stands, being Renaissance or modern, cannot compare with the Grand’ Place in most other Belgian cities.
The centre of the Place is occupied by a bronze fountain, with a statue of Silvius Brabo, a mythical hero of mediæval invention, intended to account for the name Brabant. He is said to have cut off the hand of the giant Antigonus, who exacted a toll from all vessels entering the Schelde, under penalty of cutting off the hand of the skipper,—a myth equally suggested by a false etymology of Antwerp from Hand Werpen (Hand throwing). The Hand of Antwerp, indeed, forms part of the city arms, and will meet you on the lamp-posts and elsewhere. It is, however, the ordinary Hand of Authority (Main de Justice), or of good luck, so common in the East, and recurring all over Europe, as on the shields of our own baronets. Such a hand, as an emblem of authority, was erected over the gate of many mediæval Teutonic cities.
One of the objects best worth visiting in Antwerp, after the Cathedral and the Picture Gallery, is the Plantin-Moretus Museum containing many memorials of a famous family of Renaissance printers, whose monuments we have already seen in the Cathedral. To reach it you turn from the Place Verte into the Rue des Peignes, almost opposite the S. door of the Cathedral. The second turning to the R. will lead you into the small Place du Vendredi, the most conspicuous building in which is the Museum.