The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto opens its doors this summer to three centuries of Flemish art. Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks brings an exceptional selection of masterpieces from the Phoebus Foundation collection to Canada. After highly successful stops in Denver, Dallas, Montreal, and Salem—already attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors—the exhibition is now on display in Toronto for the first time.

The Southern Netherlands was the hub of Europe from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Cities like Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp were the New York, Hong Kong, and—we can’t ignore this one—Toronto of the late Middle Ages. In this climate of trade, innovation, and ambition, artists began to experiment as never before. Genres like portrait, landscape, and still life emerged, as did the art market as we know it today. Painters no longer worked solely on commission from the church or the crown, but also painted at their own initiative and risk, for an audience that looked, chose, and bought. They cleverly capitalised on demand, fashion, and symbolism—and proved that art is just as much an economy.

What they created was not simply decoration, but a sophisticated visual language that still feels surprisingly relevant today.