Ferdinand van Kessel (attributed)

The Dance of the Rats

ca. 1690

Anthony van Dyck — Lady Elizabeth Thimbelby and her Sister. circa 1637. detail

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Census at Bethlehem, 1566.

In the early 1500s, the church ordered several portraits by Jan van Eyck altered to make the subjects’ skin appear more flawless. One large mole was removed from the Arnolfini Portrait entirely. Only now that restoration has achieved its current technological status are efforts under way to replenish the Flemish blemish.

Flemish painter Quinten Massys’s “The Ugly Duchess (An Old Woman)” (1513) may have actually been portraying a man all along.

It was long believed that the subject of the painting was indeed a woman suffering from Paget’s Disease, but Emma Capron, curator of The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire at the National Gallery in London, believes otherwise, citing the figure’s bone structure and dated accessories as well as the context of the artist’s inspirations.

Jessica Chastain

Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, 1485. Hans Memling (Flemish, 1430-1494).

Borremans' Chapel - This room in the Archbishop's Palace in Palermo was frescoed in 1733-34 by the Flemish painter William Borremans. In the 20th century, Cardinal Archbishop Ruffini made it into his personal chapel by bringing in an altar and other Baroque furnishings from churches that had been demolished or redecorated. The palace is now the Diocesan Museum.

Photos by Charles Reeza

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, “Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters and Bird Trap”, 1565

17th Century Flemish artist Michael Sweert “Head of a Woman”

the right door of the Portinari Triptych, painted by Hugo van der Goes 1475-1478

Carstian Luyckx

Memento Mori, still life with musical instruments, books, sheet music, skeleton, skull and armor

c.1650

Peter Paul Rubens — Portrait of the Infanta (or Princess) Isabella. circa 1615. detail

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Landscape with The Flight into Egypt, 1563.

Prometheus Bound (Peter Paul Rubens, 1611-1612)

World landscape: Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx, oil on panel, 64 × 103cm Prado, Madrid.

Joachim Patinir, also called Patenier (c. 1480 – 5 October 1524), was a Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia,[1] but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market in the Low Countries.

Patinir was a friend of not only Dürer, but also of the leading Antwerp painter Quentin Metsys, with whom he often collaborated. The Temptation of St Anthony (Prado) was executed in collaboration with Metsys, who added the figures to Patinir's landscape. His career was nearly contemporary with that of Albrecht Altdorfer, the other major pioneer of paintings dominated by the landscape, who worked in a very different style.

Crispin van den Broeck, Flemish (1523–1591), Two Young Men, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University