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The pimples of Joos Vijd
Sometime in the 1420s, Joos Vijd and Elisabeth Borluut commissioned an altarpiece for their private chapel. This would eventually become the greatest painting of the age — the result of years of intensive labour by one of the most acclaimed artists of the Low Countries. The couple must have paid a...
Blog posts
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The conservation in three details
The Ghent Altarpiece has been reborn in the past decade. The conservation campaign gradually revealed that the original had been heavily overpainted – to the extent that the hand of Van Eyck was sometimes hard to find. Perhaps the best way to illustrate our work is by giving a few examples.
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Life as it is: the conservation of The Ghent Altarpiece
Hardly anyone can develop as intense a relationship with The Ghent Altarpiece as we conservators. There we are, working face to face with Van Eyck, right down to each individual brush stroke. That captures your imagination, of course. People often ask me questions about what that feels like and what our working day is like. The answers are below!
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Myth busting: 3 persistent fallacies about the Ghent Altarpiece
Few works of art have such mythopoetic power as the Ghent Altarpiece. That is to say: soon numerous legends sprang up about it — and they continue to be shared by many people. Sometimes they are completely made up, sometimes they contain a kernel of truth. These are three of them.
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What is depicted in the Ghent Altarpiece?
Many stories surround the Ghent Altarpiece. Amateur detectives, for example, have been engrossed in the mystery concerning that one stolen panel for just under a century. But it might be a good idea to take a look at the seventeen other panels. What is actually depicted in Ghent’s most famous painting?
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Good food for everyone
Good food is preferably fresh, tasty and locally produced, but it’s much more than that. The City of Ghent feels that food waste should be reduced to a minimum and that good food must be affordable for everyone. It will be my pleasure to tell you what Ghent does to achieve these goals.
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The beauty of small things: details of the renovated cathedral
Restorers are specialists in finding a balance between old and new, between visible and invisible, between permanent and temporary. On the one hand, they want to go back to the original as much as possible, but on the other hand, they should not fake it. Just take a look at some of the details.
