The Golden Age of Flanders

The Chancellery of The Phoebus Foundation, in collaboration with the Province of East Flanders, organized its very first exhibition in 2016 at the Caermersklooster Provincial Cultural Centre in Ghent. It marked the Chancellery’s first appearance as a new player in the field of old masters.

The Birth of Capitalism drew visitors back to the Golden Age of the Southern Netherlands (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). It painted a picture of the economic power of the County of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant – important technological, industrial and commercial centres of the then known world, and cast a fresh light on an economic and cultural highpoint.

The exhibition devoted to the ‘Silicon Valley of the Middle Ages’ attracted some 70,000 visitors, including the Belgian royal family.