The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp is a highly respected institute with a large collection of paintings, statues and drawings. The mainly Flemish and Belgian collection of the museum is internationally renowned. Visitors can admire the works of Jea

Most people would be hard pressed to name a famous artist from Renaissance France. Yet sixteenth-century French kings believed they were the heirs of imperial Rome and commissioned a magnificent array of visual arts to secure their hopes of political ascendancy with images of overflowing abundance. With a wide-ranging yet richly detailed interdisciplinary approach, Rebecca Zorach examines the visual culture of the French Renaissance, where depictions of sacrifice, luxury, fertility, violence, metamorphosis, and sexual excess are central. Zorach looks at the cultural, political, and individual roles that played out in these artistic themes and how, eventually, these aesthetics of exuberant abundance disintegrated amidst perceptions of decadent excess. Throughout the book, abundance and excess flow in liquids-blood, milk, ink, and gold-that highlight the materiality of objects and the human body, and explore the value (and values) accorded to them. The arts of the lavish royal court at Fontainebleau and in urban centers are here explored in a vibrant tableau that illuminates our own contemporary relationship to excess and desire. From marvelous works by Francois Clouet to oversexed ornamental prints to Benvenuto Cellini's golden saltcellar fashioned for Francis I, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold covers an astounding range of subjects with precision and panache, producing the most lucid, well-rounded portrait of the cultural politics of the French Renaissance to date.

"Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) was a Flemish Baroque painter whose work has largely been overshadowed by his contemporaries Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. Providing new insight on the artist as well as art historical context for his works, Jacob Jordaens and Antiquity emphasizes his strategic intelligence with respect to imagery and the art market and challenges the common characterization of Jordaens as a bourgeois artist of genre scenes. Jordaens's work is examined as an example of classical culture being introduced into the commercial and intellectual life of Antwerp. He was an artist with an unusual talent for conveying imagery from classical literature, ranging from Satyr and Peasant to Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man. Focusing on the theme of antiquity, this volume features eighty paintings, drawings, tapestries, and sculptures from private collections and major museums, including the Museo Nacional del Prado in Spain and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark."--Publisher's website.

At various points over the course of the 20th century, the Belgian State and its various ministries and provinces consciously chose to subsidise not only the fine arts but also the applied and decorative arts, and in particular the art of weaving tapestry. On the one hand, orders were placed for World Exhibitions and for Belgian embassies, and on the other competitions were held for tapestries to be hung in important locations such as the United Nations and NATO headquarters, and the exhibitions that were organized by the various ministries over the years. They provided an overview of the ways in which this branch of the arts was changing as well as representative work by the best tapestry designers. The exhibitions organized by the provincial authorities give quite a different image. There were the highly conventional exhibitions of Brabantine tapestries to promote the craftsmanship of the province and there were the more innovative textile exhibitions. Taken as a whole, the commissions, competitions and exhibitions give a good overview of what was happening in Belgium in the field of tapestry over the period 1945-1980. They also make it clear what image was being projected abroad: that of a country with rich traditions, master craftsmanship in weaving, and in the 1970s some affiliation to the latest developments in European textile art.