Belgium 2017 - Bruges Part 2

Bruges during the day is definitely beautiful, but Bruges all lit up at night is stunning, and has the added advantage of being less crowded since all the tour bus and cruise ship visitors have left.  All the streets, canals, bridges and squares that were teeming with pedestrians, tour boats and horse-drawn carriages during the day become eerily quiet and empty at night, at least at the end of April before the height of tourist season.  It was so peaceful to walk around and take night photos of the gorgeous sights without other people getting in the way.

We did have some competition when trying to take photos at the corner touted as the best and most photographed view in Bruges.  From this vantage point, you could see the Belfry towering in the distance, and a series of Flemish-styled buildings that included the Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce, a 4-star hotel decorated with paintings by Gustav Klimt and Henri Matisse.  The hotel was made all the more famous after being used as a filming location for the movie “In Bruges”.  This is the hotel where the two hitmen Ray and Ken stayed during their visit, and where Ray jumped out of a window onto a canal boat during a climactic chase scene towards the end of the movie.  Another beautiful sight that we spotted across the canal was the Duc de Bourgogne Hotel and Restaurant, which dates back to 1648.  Located in the Huidenvettersplein Square next to the Vismarkt (old Fish Market), the restaurant faces and provides excellent views of the canal.  We wandered into the restaurant without a reservation around 8:30pm on a Wednesday evening hoping to get any available table, since we had read that this place is usually packed in the summer.

Not only did we score a table, but we were assigned what we considered to be the best table in the restaurant, right next to the window with a direct view of the Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce Hotel.  From our seats we could look through the windows of the hotel and see some of the décor and paintings.  On top of the stunning scenery, the interior of the Duc de Bourgogne was quite impressive, with luxurious drapes and valances, chandeliers, fireplaces, paintings and murals still reflecting the décor of the 17th century period when the restaurant was first established.  After seeing it many times on menus since we arrived in Belgium, we finally tried the classic dish of Flemish-style white asparagus topped with pieces of hard boiled egg and tomato, covered with a mousseline sauce, which is a hollandaise sauce lightened with whipped cream.  We shared this as an appetizer, along with a goose liver pate with marmalade on toast.  For our main courses, we both ordered the seafood bouillabaisse in a tomato soup base with potato, carrots and large chunks of local fish.  This was one of the priciest meals of our trip, but the ambience made it well worth it.

On our second day in Bruges, we wanted to visit a few more locations from the “In Bruges” movie that were not covered by the walking tour that we took the previous day.  We started at the Koningin AstridPark, where a depressed Ray goes to contemplate his fate.  This pretty little park is located on the south side of the Groenerei Canal, a few blocks away from the Burg Square.  Once a monastery cloister garden until it was turned into a public park in the 1850, it features a tiny man-made lake with a sculpture and fountain in it, a children’s playground, and a vibrantly painted pavilion to provide shelter and shade.  We were lucky enough to visit during tulip season and the colourful flowers were in full bloom.

Our next stop was Van Eyckplein, a square honouring 15th Century Flemish Renaissance master Jan Van Eyck, featuring a magnificent bronze sculpture of the painter, erected in 1878 with the Spiegelrei canal in the background.  While Van Eyck was not born in Bruges, he spent a large part of his life and died there.  A scene filmed for the movie “In Bruges” depicts Ken and Ray sitting in Van Eyckplein with the steeple of a 15th Century building called the “Poortersloge” (Burgher’s Lodge) and the rear of the Van Eyck sculpture displayed clearly behind them.  Having found an image from this scene on the Internet, I wanted to recreate the photo when we were in the square. But despite several attempts, I was unable to capture the same perspective regardless of where I asked Rich to stand.

The Poortersloge was a meeting place for the richest and most powerful citizens where they interacted with their trading partners.  It acted as an informal town hall where key political and economical decisions were made.  The burghers formed the Society of the White Bear, represented by the statue of the “Bear of the Loggia” positioned at the side of the building at the corner of Academiestraat.  The other building of note that can be seen from the square is the Tolhius, a fancy 15th Century Renaissance building decorated with bright red doors and the coat of arms of the dukes of Luxembourgh.  Goods were cleared through this building and taxes and tolls were levied here.

We spent several hours of our second day in Bruges inside the Groening Museum, which features Flemish and Belgian paintings spanning from the 15th through the 20th centuries, with pieces from the Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classical, Realist, Modernism, Flemish Expressionism and Post-war Modernist periods.  The museum was built on the former site of the Eekhout Abbey, a medieval house of Augustinian Canons, as is reflected by the lush grounds and the ecclesiastical architecture of some of the original buildings and walls.  The highlight of the museum is the collection of 15th-16th century paintings by local artists in a style later named as “Flemish Primitives”.  Characteristics of this style included an extreme attention to detail, highly realistic renderings of materials and textures, use of symbolic or religious representations of common-place objects and images to invoked emotions from the viewer.   Many of the masterpieces from this period were confiscated and removed to Paris during the French Revolution and not returned to Bruges until the early 19th century.

Jan Van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele (1434) is an oil on oak panel painting that provides an early example of the use of perspective and features intricate details in the carpet and the vestment robes of Saint Donatian.  Dutch artist Gerard David’s diptych The Judgement of Cambyses (1498) depicts the arrest and subsequent flaying of corrupt Persian judge Sisamnes, who accepted a bribe and delivered an unjust verdict.  King Cambyses II of Persia ordered that the judge be flayed alive and his skin was used to cover the throne of Cambyses’ son.  The painting acted as a warning to local magistrates and was a symbolic public apology for the imprisonment of Emperor Maximilian I in 1488.  Jan Provoost’s diptych Death and the Miser (1515) was interesting to compare against the other diptych and triptych examples of the times since it took a single scene and separated it across two panels as opposed to depicting a separate scene in each panel.

We spent quite a bit of time closely reviewing the fantastical and fascinating triptych called The Last Judgement (1482) by Hieronymus Bosch.  The left panel depicts Paradise with blessed souls being shipped to the Garden of Eden on a pink boat.   The Judgement is shown on the centre panel, with  Christ sitting as judge at the top, surrounded by apostles and angels playing the Trumpets of Last Judgement.  They overlook a scene where sinners are being punished in horrific ways including burning and being force-fed impure food (a symbol for gluttony).  The panel on the right represents Hell under siege by demons who torture lost souls while buildings are ablaze in the background.  Bosch uses cheery pink, green and blue hues to depict Paradise, then transitions into darker red and black tones as he moves towards Hell.  He painted a second similar triptych with the same title that is on display in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Bosch’s bizzare, often nightmarish imagery with strange half man/half animal or demonic figures conveying religious or allegorical undertones, was an obvious inspiration for Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Mad Meg, which we failed to see in Antwerp because it was being restored.  In fact, Meg’s facial features look quite similar to the face of the large pink-hooded demon who is in the process of devouring a man, depicted in the central panel of Bosch’s Last Judgement.  The Groening Museum has a Bruegel in its collection as well—The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (1506), which features Brugel’s characteristic trademark of portraying large multitudes of figures within his scenes.  In this painting, the central figure of John the Baptist is preaching to throngs of peasants, gypsies, beggars and soldiers, while Christ himself looks on from the back.  Both Bosch and Bruegel's works require close inspection so as not to miss any details, since each character or element may convey an important aspect of the overall story or message of a work.

While the paintings from the Flemish Primitives period dominate much of the Groening, the museum does contain some interesting modern works as well including paintings by noted Surrealists Rene Magritte (The Assault) and Max Ernst (Vestal Virgins), both from 1973.  We would see more examples of Magritte in Brussels but I must admit that I don’t really understand what his works are about.  In Magritte’s The Assault, I see clouds, a ball, a building with windows and a bare torso, but what does it all mean?  While the exaggerated and distorted depiction of the two elongated yet rotund couples in Expressionist painter Frits van den Berghe’s Lovers in the Village caught my eye, what was particularly intriguing to me was how similar his name was to the collector Fritz Mayer van den Berghe whose museum we visited in Antwerp.

The most eye-catching painting in the modern section was the giant floor-to-ceiling rendering of The Last Supper (1927) by Belgian Expressionist artist Gustave van de Woestyne.  While there was no doubt about the theme being depicted, the stylized representations of Christ and his disciples, with their overly large solemn eyes and gaunt faces were quite startling to behold, especially when compared to other more traditional paintings of The Last Supper, like the one by Dutch Renaissance painter Pieter Pourbus created in 1548.  Van de Woestyne’s version is more conceptual, with the figures crowded around the narrow but tall table acting more as symbols as opposed to realistic depictions of this iconic scene.

The works of Pieter Pourbus caught our attention since we had reservations that evening to dine at the restaurant named in his honour and situated in his former home.  The historic house was built in 1561 and features wood beams in the ceiling and two open fires.  Still taking advantage of asparagus season, we ordered another white asparagus dish covered with shrimps, prosciutto and a sauce.  For the main course, Rich ordered fried sole in a white wine sauce with mashed potato and steamed vegetables.

I chose the set meal with an appetizer of scampis in cream sauce, monkfish in peppercorn sauce with fries and salad, and a dessert of chocolate mousse which I shared with Rich.  After dinner, we took one last evening stroll through the picturesque streets of Bruges, before returning to our hotel to prepare for our journey to Ghent the next morning.