We walked down into the downtown of Liége this morning from our apartment. Since it was a Saturday, the streets were practically empty.
Ella stopped in at St. Paul’s Cathedral to check on a recent art exhibition and then we stopped for Belgian waffles Liége-style. They had a surgery density that the other Belgian waffle I had in Bruges lacked. Not a light, frivolous waffle smothered in showy whipped cream, but a serious, unadorned working class waffle meant to stoke the carb intake.
After waffling up, we crossed multiple tram tracks to the large classical structure that seems to the main building to Liége University. As I stood in front of one of the four heavy wooden doors at the entrance wondering which one was unlocked, it silently swung open. If there are lazy susans and dumb waiters, are there ghost butlers? Let’s just say there are and that one of them sensed my presence and opened the door. Inside we asked around for the college art gallery and got gestured to a door to a courtyard that had a smaller door in the corner with a bashful sign indicating it was how we got into The Wittert Museum.
The only staff member on duty only spoke French, but we understood enough to glean that it was a small gallery with only two rooms. In the first there were a few paintings and a display case with a 16th century diptych attributed to an “Anonymous Flemish”. Closed, it had a caption that warned anyone opening the diptych to do so at the own risk.
Opening the panels of the diptych you literally become the butt of the joke with the character on the right panel with a caption that basically said, “I warned you!’
In the next room there was an early 16th century painting of “Saint Christopher in a Landscape of Devils.” It was attributed to a Dutch artist named Jan Mandjin who was obviously influenced by Bosch.
Oddly mixed in with this 16th century collection was a photograph that had the simple title: “Walloon Terrorist.”
It was like one of the professors at the university responsible for curating the collection wanted to say the Flemish weren’t the only artists with a weird sense of humor.