The date: 16 September 2016. The place: Peru, where, in the church of San Sebastián in a suburb of Cuzco, one electrical wire touches another. When the fire is finally extinguished around midday, some eighty per cent of the church interior has been reduced to cinders. In just a few hours, a huge part of the oeuvre of Quispe Tito (c.1611-1681) perished.

This edition of Phoebus Focus turns the spotlight on Quispe Tito’s Holy Family in Nazareth and the motley mix of connections between a painting produced in a brand-new world and a print made in a much older one. Holy Family bridges Jesuit thought and Inca heritage. It tells a tale of artistic and cultural legacies and idiosyncratic interpretations.

Let yourself be captivated by the floral splendour of Vase of Flowers with Vanitas Symbols by Jan Davidsz. De Heem (1606-1684). De Heem belongs to the canon of Dutch Baroque painting and astonishes everyone with the refined painting technique with which he creates his flower still lives. Through historical sources and material-technical research, you will be introduced to the flourishing seventeenth century and the exuberant and colourful Baroque painting of the time.

This Phoebus Focus tells the remarkable story of Johannes I Gansacker (1592-1664) and the remarkable history of his portrait. It allows us to interpret Gansacker as one of the many young, ambitious entrepreneurs in seventeenth-century Antwerp. A self-made social climber who was only too happy to be portrayed at the beginning of that climb by a painter with exactly the same ambitions as him, namely Anthony Van Dyck.

A lone walker at dawn in Ostend, Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) is entranced by the bleak and ominous desolation of the promenade. A fascination with spatiality and the expression of infinity underlie the numerous dyke scenes Spilliaert created between 1907 and 1909, heralding a unique, formal innovation. Learn more about the compelling Kursaal and Promenade that is the centrepiece of this Phoebus Focus.

The Phoebus Foundation’s collection includes an unusual painting which has an equally unusual title: Head-Baker. A baker’s servant, frozen in motion, with his cleaver raised high in the air, is poised to decapitate the man sitting in front of him with a well-aimed swing. The mysterious title combined with the strange scene raises many questions. Was there really a baker running around decapitating his customers? Is the man administering a humiliating punishment, carrying out an early form of plastic surgery, or is something else going on?

In the Phoebus Focus series, experts and scientists discuss masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation.

In this Phoebus Focus edition, Katharina Van Cauteren, chief of staff at The Phoebus Foundation, made an analysis of the various meanings and motifs behind Hendrick De Clerck’s depiction of the moralising Biblical story of Susanna and the Elders. Considering the #MeToo movement, this story of power, intimidation, sex and injustice proves more contemporary than ever.

In the Phoebus Focus series, experts and scientists discuss masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation.

Did you know that lace production in Belgium experienced an unprecedented boom during the First World War? It seems almost contradictory, but during the Great War, lace-makers were producing more lace than ever, driven by Queen Elisabeth. The lace they created was sold in the allied countries for the benefit of war victims. The largest market was undoubtedly the United States, where many of these war lace fragments are still preserved in prestigious collections today. Characteristic of these unique objects is their patriotic iconography: the fragments, handkerchiefs and tablecloths are decorated with coats of arms, clawing lions and heraldry.

In this edition of Phoebus Focus, war lace expert Wendy Wiertz tells the extraordinary story of this unique heritage created during the darkest days of our history.

Flowers power!

Daffodils, pink roses with heads bowed, an orange lily, flaming tulips, bright blue irises, …  The variety of flowers and the bright colours are magnificent and appear to burst out of the panel. Flowers in a Vase with a Clump of Cyclamen and Precious Stones is a masterpiece by one of the most important painters from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625). Although people would also call him ‘Flower Brueghel’, he only began painting vases of flowers in his late thirties. Flowers in a Vase with a Clump of Cyclamen and Precious Stones is one of the earliest and finest examples, a stunning masterpiece through which this Phoebus Focus zooms in on the sources of inspiration, motivation and method of the master who concentrated on all this floral beauty with such dedication and precision.

The Antwerp Baroque portrait specialist Anthony Van Dyck painted Henricus Liberti in around 1627-1632 as a self-assured and talented musician, who was well aware of his worth. Today, just a handful of Liberti’s musical pieces have been preserved and the archives hardly mention any traces of the life of this Antwerp keyboard virtuoso and composer. We do not even know for sure when and where he was born.

The fact that the musician was not forgotten is largely due to Van Dyck’s magnificent Portrait of Henricus Liberti, which is now part of The Phoebus Foundation’s collection. This Phoebus Focus zooms in on the prestigious history of Van Dyck’s portrait and brings together the details of Liberti’s life and oeuvre. We also focus on the masterly way in which the painter depicted the inspired virtuoso.

In the Phoebus Focus series, experts and scientists discuss masterpieces from the rich collection of The Phoebus Foundation.

In this Phoebus Focus , Matthew Reeves focuses on the two alabaster pleurants of the tomb monument of the famous Duke Jean De Berry (1340-1416). Who were these men, for whom were they made, and why? Matthew Reeves tells the story of one of France’s richest princes, Jean de Berry (1340-1416), his profound love of art and the wondrous ways in which sculpture can be used to commemorate, move us to prayer, and serve political ends.

In the Phoebus Focus series, experts and scientists discuss masterpieces from the rich collection of The Phoebus Foundation.

Servius Sulpicius Galba was a Roman emperor who overthrew and succeeded Nero during the Year of the Four Emperors, 68-69 AD. In this ‘Phoebus Focus’ Nils Büttner places the extraordinary emperor portrait that Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) painted of him in its context. Büttner does not only whisks the reader off to first-century Rome, he also makes an analysis of Rubens’ support medium and painting method, his fascination with Antiquity, his sources of inspiration and many inventions. In addition, Büttner elaborates on the long tradition of painting portraits of rulers and their integration in Baroque interiors.

In St Begga Leen Kelchtermans examines strong, religious women and their devotion, and Catholic and dynastic displays of power. She whisks the reader away to between the seventh and seventeenth centuries and elaborates on the way Begga, daughter of Itta of Metz (c.592-652) and Pepin the Elder (c.580-639), was officially appointed as the foundress of the flourishing beguine movement in 1630. Around 1635 the Flemish Baroque master Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) portrayed St Begga, a painting that abounds with captivating stories. This edition of ‘Phoebus Focus’ restores both St Begga and Jacob Jordaens to flesh and blood human beings.