The almost unknown Mayer van den Bergh Museum occupies a sombre neo-renaissance house in Antwerp. Overcome your caution and you will discover one of the finest private art collections in Europe.
It was assembled by Frits Mayer van den Bergh, a rich art collector who died at an early age, leaving everything to his mother. She turned her son’s empty house, which he never occupied, into a museum.
The collection includes Pieter Bruegel’s haunting painting Dulle Griet as well as a tiny sculptured head of Blanche de France, daughter of the King of France, who died before her third birthday, just 17 days after her sister passed away.
Their devastated father commissioned a marble tomb with the figures of his two daughters. It was destroyed in the French Revolution, leaving just this one little head in a deserted museum in Antwerp.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
