A Lavish Past

Museum Hof van Busleyden – 27.11. 2021 to 27.02.2022

Looking back at the past is something that people have always done. History was as popular in the nineteenth century as it is today. It was the century when new nations were born and others took a more prominent role on the international stage. The Romantic Era saw a renewed interest in the Dukes of Burgundy, from Philip the Bold to the glorious Emperor Charles.

This brought the fifteenth and sixteenth century Burgundian rulers back to the foreground in a number of European countries. As the patriarchs of the Low Countries they were depicted in paintings, literature and sculpture. However, their image varies greatly from one country to another. What does this tell us about the nineteenth-century view of the past? Or about the way we look at our history today?

A Lavish Past. The Burgundians Through the Eyes of the Romanticists offered visitors a view of the past from the modern context, with a critical eye and a changing perspective of the past. The underground exhibition space of Museum Hof van Busleyden was converted to a nineteenth-century monumental museum and showed, through seventy works, a longing for the grandeur of the past.

Curator of A Lavish Past

This exhibition was curated by Bart Stroobants (Museum Hof van Busleyden).

Publication of A Lavish Past

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published in a Dutch and French edition by Uitgeverij Snoeck.

Partners of A Lavish Past

‘A Lavish Past’ is a collaboration between Museum Hof van Busleyden and the Monastère royal de Brou in Bourg-en-Bresse (France), where the exhibition could be seen in the spring of 2022.

With thanks to Knack, Klara and De Standaard.