Museum Mayer van den Bergh

Museum Mayer van den Bergh is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, housing the collection of the art dealer and collector Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858-1901). The major works are from the Gothic and Renaissance period in the Netherlands and Belgium, including paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Mad Meg by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, is one of the masterpieces in the museum.

Portrait of Fritz Mayer van den Bergh by Jozef Janssens, 1901

Page from the Breviarium Mayer van den Bergh, depicting The torture of multiple saints

History

Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, born in 1858, collected art for most of his life, making his most expensive and important additions between 1897 and his death in 1901. He was especially interested in art from the 14th to sixteenth century, while his contemporaries considered the Gothic and Renaissance art dated. This fact enabled him to create a collection of 1.000 pieces of mostly Northern Renaissance art. After his death, his mother Henriette Mayer van den Bergh built a neo-gothic house in the banking district of Antwerp between 1901 and 1904, as a museum for the expansive art collection.[1]

Collection

• Breviarium Mayer van den Bergh, a late 15th-century or early 16th-century illustrated manuscript of 1412 pages, probably made for a rich Portuguese in Antwerp by Simon Bening, Gerard Horenbout and Jan Provost, Flemish miniaturists from the Ghent-Bruges school.
• Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Dulle Griet (Mad Meg or Dull Gret), ca. 1562
• Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Proverbs'
• Master Heinrich of Constance, Christ and Saint John Group, 14th century
• Pieter Huys, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1577
• Jan Mabuse, Magdalen
• Quentin Matsys, Crucifixion
• a Pleurant, 15th Century.

Gallery

• 
  Illumination from the 12th century Evangeliary from Saint-Amand Abbey
• 
  Virgin and Child Enthroned with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin (unknown master, Italian active in the 1270s)
• 
  Resurrection from the Antwerp-Baltimore Quadriptych, ca. 1380
• 
  Lady Portrayed as Mary Magdalene by Jan Gossaert dit Mabuse
• 
  Pietà by Vrancke van der Stockt, 15th century
• 
  Elisabeth Vekemans als meisje by Cornelis de Vos, ca. 1625
• 
  Still life by Willem Claeszoon Heda, 1637

Notes

1. "Art: HIDDEN MASTERPIECES: Brueghel's Proverbs". Time. 12 October 1959. Retrieved 24 September 2009.

External links

• Official website