Second paragraph of third chapter:

Lorsqu’il allait, en de muettes dévotions, baiser la relique de la chevelure conservée ou s’attendrir devant quelque portrait, ce n’est plus avec la morte qu’il confrontait l’image, mais avec la vivante qui lui ressemblait. Mystérieuse identification de ces deux visages. Ç’avait été comme une pitié du sort ( Read more... )

A fascinating juxtaposition of public art can be seen in Ostende, which we visited briefly on Sunday. Notoriously, an equestrian statue of King Leopold II (1835-1909, ruled 1865-1909) dominates the Royal Galleries along the seafront.

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We spent one day of our trip out west in and around Ypres, where the grand Cloth Hall, reconstructed after 1918, houses the moving and thorough In Flanders Fields Museum, chronicling the experiences of the first world war. It took us about an hour and a half to walk through.

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We've been to Bruges twice in the last few days, parking both times in the Zilverpand car park, which is nice and central. Overlooking the escalators between level -1 and level -2 of the car park are two rather interesting art works - one showing, er, people on an escalator, the other showing a rural local scene with a white bird in the foreground ( Read more... )

We had a little excursion yesterday to the Roman Archæological Museum in Oudenburg, close to Bruges
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We’re taking a couple of days out west, and yesterday once again visited the Groeningemuseum in Bruges. Last time we went, my imagination was captured by the portraits of Baron van Keverberg and his English wife Mary Lodge. Facing them is another striking portrait, of Théodore-Joseph Jonet and his daughters Juliette and Emilie, painted in 1832 by ( Read more... )