All churched out? Try the Onze-Lieve Vrouwekathedraal
It’s not lost on me that it’s easy to become a bit “over-churched” when travelling through Europe. As beautiful as all those architectural wonders can be, after a week or two they often have the tendency to merge into one another. However, to my tastes, there is one church that defies this trend, and one I deliberately make a point of visiting on each visit: Antwerp’s Cathedral of Our Lady, or the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal.
From the outside, the building is an splendid example of Gothic architecture. It was built over a period of about 170 years, starting in 1352. It’s the largest Gothic church in the Low Countries, and is duly listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But while the architecture is undeniably impressive, it’s the interior artworks that really shine. Many different movements in art history have left their mark here, from as far back as the fourteenth century, right up to contemporary pieces (see the photos above), and all the centuries in between.
The result is an overwhelming collection that not only stimulates the senses but conveys meaning. Everywhere you look you see artworks that speak about things that mattered to the earliest patrons of the church: humanity’s role in the world, our relationship with God. As a modern viewer, I tend to walk in and simply absorb the space. I experience the height, length and breadth of the building. The pillars. The play of light.
And then I make my way to the Rubens altarpieces.
The Cathedral is the proud owner of four masterpieces by Peter Paul Rubens, two of which can be admired in situ: both the Descent from the Cross and Assumption of the Holy Virgin were commissioned for the place where they are on display today. And for me this transforms the experience, to view works of art in the precise context that a seventeenth-century viewer would have, and I am always rendered speechless (if you know me, you know this is a feat in itself). If these paintings have such an emotional affect on us, living as we do in an age so heavily inundated with visual media and stimuli, imagine then the visceral reaction likely experienced by audiences from earlier centuries. To say that viewing these paintings is one of my favourite things to see anywhere in the world is a whopping understatement. Here I reset my ‘over-churched’ setting… and head back outside, to track down a piping hot bowl of stoverij.
