MICHAEL PYE AUTHOR TALK

Wed 19 Jun 2024, 5–6pm

At the Taylorian and Online

The in-person event takes place in the Taylorian Institute

The online event will be via Zoom

Booking is essential. See below

With author Michael Pye

Before glamorous 19th-century Paris or menacing 20th-century New York, there was Antwerp in the 16th century - the city of Bruegel and then Rubens, a river port which played politics to become a dazzling world city.

Join Michael Pye, author of Antwerp: The Glory Years, for this talk which will explore the sensational history of the town where Bruegel and Rubens worked.

Plan of Antwerp, Virgilius Bononiensis, 1565, hand-coloured woodcut © Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp

A distant view of Antwerp, seen from the East, drawn by Flemish artist Hans Bol in brown ink pen, with brown wash, over black chalk, created 1575 - 1580

A distant view of Antwerp, seen from the East, Hans Bol, 1575-1580, pen in brown ink © Ashmolean Museum. Both drawings featured in the Bruegel to Rubens exhibition

Antwerp's markets guaranteed credit for the known world whilst its scandals went around Europe, dinner table by dinner table.

Books and music and art created in Antwerp decorated Medici palaces, American chapels and helped kings when they went wooing.

It was the city of the deal which survived sieges and fires and mutinies to leave a double legacy: wonderful art, and the machinery to sell it.

In this fascinating talk from Michael Pye, you'll delve into all this rich history and discover more about the backdrop to our current Bruegel to Rubens exhibition.

About Michael Pye

Michael Pye's 12 previous books have been translated into 15 languages; three have been New York Times 'Notable Books of the Year', two were British bestsellers and one became a Hollywood movie.

He won various prizes in Modern History at Oxford, and went on to be journalist, broadcaster and columnist in London and New York. He lives in Amsterdam.