Flanders
How flabby our ideas of draughtsmanship have become
The term drawing is a broad umbrella, so in an exhibition of 120 works it helps to outline some distinctions.…
The manhunt dividing Belgium
Belgium’s leading virologist is in hiding, holed up with his family in a government safe house. The reason? A right-wing…
On the trail of one of the first artists to paint ordinary things
The Master of Flémalle was one of the first painters to depict in detail the reality of ordinary things. But who was he? Martin Gayford finds a prime suspect
How Jan van Eyck revolutionised painting
Jan van Eyck changed the art of picture-making more fundamentally than anyone who has ever lived, says Martin Gayford
The fascinating story behind one of the best-loved depictions of the Nativity
In the early 1370s an elderly Scandinavian woman living in Rome had a vision of the Nativity. Her name was…
Woe betide you if you try to speak French in Flanders
Usually, one of the first indications that you’ve entered a bilingual country is that the road signs are in two…
Antwerp: the compact, charming capital of a country that doesn’t quite exist yet
Napoleon didn’t think much of Antwerp. ‘Scarcely a European city at all,’ he scoffed. If only he could see it…
Climate change, Bruegel-style
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
Brave Tommies and dim earls — Oh What a Lovely War is hoity-toity reductionism
Here it is. Fifty years late. Oh What a Lovely War was originally staged at Stratford East in 1964. It…
