First thing this morning (10am ), Grubb had tickets for us to visit the famous Ghent altar piece, a triptych called The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Hubert and Jan van Eyke at St. Bavo’s cathedral. Grubb will wax eloquent but I wanted to praise the technology. Before being allowed to view the painting, we were fitted with VR (virtual reality) headsets and sent down to the crypt. The VR walked us through the history of the church, let us peek into the workshop where we could see van Eyck at work, and showed us the timeline of the painting being sold, sold again, looted and finally restored back to its original glory – all but one panel which had been stolen and to this day never been found.
Coffee came next. Then it was time to make a plan. Ah, how about a cemetery? Turns out there was an interesting one, Campo Santo, about a 30 minute walk away. This was an important burial place for Flemish writers, artists, and local nobility. Notable burials include Nobel Prize winners, great painters, activists of the Flemish movement, and Marc Sleen, one of the pioneers of Belgian comic books. Not that we recognized any of these but it was a nice walk through a different part of Ghent.
From the cemetery we headed to the Museum of Fine Arts where there is a special exhibition called “Old Masters were Women Too” (or “she painted, he signed”). Separate post about that.
Here are some photos from our walk
Last thing of the day was walking back into the central historic area for early dinner. We ran into a relay race being held in a big square. Races sponsored by Red Bull and Coca Cola. If nothing else, this part of the world still needs corporate America.
When Moira and I went in 1993 (over 30 years ago) there were no crowds, no timed tickets, and no virtual reality, not even much of an explanation. I liked it better in the old days.
I have to say I really did appreciate the VR presentation. I would have had to do a lot of research to pull together such a full story surrounding the painting in addition to being able to zoom in on some of the detail elements. I was in a much better place to admire the work when we got to the real thing.