Modern Renaissance.
The reception of Italian Renaissance art by Belgian fin‑de‑siècle artists.
Lecture by Jean-Philippe Huys (Centre pour l'Etude du XIXe siècle)
The strong interest in the Italian Renaissance profoundly shaped Belgian artistic production at the end of the nineteenth century. This lecture examines how Symbolist artists – including Charles Vanderstappen, Xavier Mellery, Léon Frédéric, Fernand Khnopff, Constant Montald, Victor Rousseau, Émile Fabry, Auguste Lévêque and Jean Delville – reinterpreted the models of the Trecento, Quattrocento and Cinquecento to develop original creations. Beyond formal quotations, it explores the spiritual dimension of this inspiration: can one speak, in Belgium around 1900, of a true Rinascimento, a rebirth of the spirit comparable to that which transformed Italy?
The lecture is in French and followed by a short guided visit of the exhibition on this theme.
Jean‑Philippe Huys is an art historian, graduated from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is affiliated with the Centre pour l’Etude du XIXe siècle, recently established at the Maison Hannon. In the Cahiers of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, he co‑authored the volume “Gustave Courbet and Belgium” and co‑edited James Ensor’s letters to the Rousseau family, mostly addressed to Mariette, the sister of Edouard Hannon.