Antwerp, Belgium

In which I discover the thrill of walking in an unknown town, visit Rubens' house, learn about the legends of Antwerp's giants, and discover how love turned a blacksmith into a painter.

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown, and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.

-Freya Stark

Alone or not, it is indeed a thrill to awaken in a strange town, surrounded by adventure and with no idea what is in store for you. Especially when it’s a town (or city) that you don’t know much about.

Such was the case when I visited Antwerp, at the very beginning of my European adventures in the spring of 2022. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the city on my arrival - it was just a convenient place to spend a few days on the way from Amsterdam to Paris. But it is a city that won me over, and one for which I will always have a soft spot in my heart. Sometimes overshadowed by close neighbors Brussels & Bruges, Antwerp is a city that seems to have it all: a historic market square and cathedral, a grand shopping street lined with Baroque architecture, an illustrious artistic heritage, the most beautiful train station in all of Europe, and the kinds of outdoor cafes and shaded squares that Americans can only dream about. It’s also where I learned some of my first words of Dutch, starting with the unusual word handwerpen…

{Antwerp, Belgium}

Did you know that the symbol of Antwerp is the hand? Little hand-shaped cookies and chocolates fill the windows of pastry shops, and on the city’s coat of arms you can just make out two disembodied hands looming over a stylized Medieval castle. What’s it all about?

The dutch word handwerpen gives us a clue - and the answer can be found at the Grote Markt, the historic market square. The Grote Markt is lined on one side with a row of beautiful vertical guildhalls, and on another with cafés, restaurants, shops, and bars. On the third, and, because the “square” is actually triangular, final side is the vast Flemish Renaissance city hall - and directly in front of the city hall is a towering bronze fountain, at the top of which is a muscular, naked man throwing something.

It’s a huge, gory hand. When the fountain is active, water spews out of the hand like an arc of spurting blood.

The man is a Roman soldier named Silvius Brabo, and he plays a huge part in the mythology of the city. According to legend, there was a giant called Druon Antigoon who guarded the main bridge across the River Scheldt into Antwerp. The giant was greedy and extorted tolls from anyone who wanted to cross the bridge. If a seafarer refused to pay the toll, Antigoon not only denied passage but punished them by cutting off their hand and tossing it into the river.

One day the brave Brabo wanted to cross the bridge. Instead of paying Antigoon’s toll, he challenged the giant to a battle and, miraculously, won. Afterward, in a symbolic show of retribution, he cut off Antigoon’s huge hand and threw it into the river for all to see.

In Dutch, the word for hand-thrower is handwerpen - a word that eventually morphed and became the name “Antwerp”.

It’s a bloody legend for a city so filled with art, culture, and beauty. But if you think that Antwerp is the kind of city that has just one giant legend, well then you are sorely mistaken.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this strange giant in front of the city’s Het Steen castle in Druon Antigoon - that’s what I thought at first. But no, it is Lange Wapper, the shape-shifting trickster who is Antwerp’s other legendary giant. Lange Wapper spent years tormenting the citizens and children of Antwerp, until the population realized that the one thing Lange Wapper feared was the Virgin Mary. Statues of Our Lady popped up on the corners of buildings all over town - they are still there, multitudes of them - and Antwerp has been unbothered by the tricky giant since.

Spend a little time in Antwerp and it becomes obvious very quickly that it is a city that cherishes its artistic heritage. It is, after all, in the heart of Flanders, a small part of a small country that produced some of the most well-known and technically skilled artists the world has ever seen.

Right off of Wapper Street (named for our giant, of course) is the home and studio of Peter Paul Rubens. A single step into the courtyard is enough to temporarily dispel the myth of the starving artist - at least in 17th-century Antwerp, when the thriving city was Europe’s second largest and wealthiest after Paris.

Rubens was the very definition of a Renaissance man: in addition to being a prolific artist, Rubens was a classically trained linguist, a published author, a designer and architect, and a diplomat. He renovated his home at the center of town to resemble a grand Italian palazzo, executing the designs himself. His studio is to the right of a formal garden and is accessed through a grand archway lined with statuary. The window-lined double-height studio is slightly separate from the house, allowing visitors and potential clients to enter the studio through the grand courtyard without walking through his private residence. It is hard to imagine that they would not be impressed.

The windows that illuminate Ruben’s studio.

All told, Rubens executed close to 1500 paintings in his fifty years as a painter, which breaks down to one painting every week and a half. All the more astonishing for anyone familiar with Rubens’s massive, oversized canvases. Reports are that he was an inveterate multi-tasker, who was able to dictate letters while entertaining visitors and having classics read aloud to him, all while painting.

Of course he had a studio and workshop full of assistants and apprentices to aid him in his efforts - the most famous of which was fellow Antwerpian Anthony van Dyck, who Rubens called “his best pupil”. Such was Rubens’s dominant success in Antwerp, that after completing his work in Rubens’s workshop, the brilliant van Dyck spent most of his career abroad, so as not to be forced to compete with his mentor.

Statue of the artist David Teniers the Younger on The Meir

There is a statue of Anthony van Dyck on The Meir - the wide boulevard that is the city’s fanciest shopping street. It is a cloudy day as I walk past his statue, and the statue of fellow artist David Teniers the Younger a bit further on. Even though it is spring, the skies are a deep grey - one could say they are not unlike the skies of a Golden Age Flemish oil painting - and there is a chill in the air.

It’s a good night to duck into a cozy restaurant, and there’s one right next to the Cathedral of Our Lady - the church in the heart of the city that at the moment happens to be entirely surrounded by scaffolding - that fits the bill. Elfde Gebod, “The Eleventh Commandment”, is an Antwerp institution - one that plays on its proximity to the cathedral not only in its name, but in its decor. Occupying the first floor of a snug 15th-century building, Elfde Gebod is filled with antique religious statuary: carved angels float above diners heads and seats are as likely as not wooden pews.

Because this is Belgium, the eleventh commandment is: Thou shalt drink beer. Belgium is a tiny country - about the size of the state of Maryland - but there are more than 400 breweries here, producing over 1500 varieties of beer.

I talk a lot about UNESCO World Heritage Sites in my letters, but I just learned that UNESCO has another list - the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and - as of 2016, Belgian beer is on that list.

According to UNESCO’s website:

Intangible cultural heritage is an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization. An understanding of the intangible cultural heritage of different communities helps with intercultural dialogue, and encourages mutual respect for other ways of life.

The importance of intangible cultural heritage is not the cultural manifestation itself but rather the wealth of knowledge and skills that is transmitted through it from one generation to the next. The social and economic value of this transmission of knowledge is relevant for minority groups and for mainstream social groups within a State, and is as important for developing States as for developed ones.

I attempt to keep the solemn importance of intangible cultural heritage in mind as I try not to giggle watching a group of Belgians drink beer for breakfast.

(Waffles, of course, are another essential Belgium foodstuff - and it is embarrassing to admit that my only Belgian waffle experience was at possibly-not-entirely-authentic restaurant called House of Waffles, right on the Groenplaats in the heart of the old town. I think I knew someplace in the back of my mind that waffles are eaten as a mid-day snack in Belgium, and not as breakfast - but it slipped my mind that morning. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why there were so many charming little windows that said “WAFFLES” on them, but none of them seemed to be open for breakfast. I can happily tell you that I will more than make up for this complete cultural fail when I visit Bruges and Ghent.)

Snuggled between the House of Waffles and the Cathedral is one of the city’s original wells - a well that is topped with a beautifully intricate wrought-iron decoration. At the base there is an inscription stating that the wrought-iron was forged by Quentin Matsys.

If you know the work of Quentin Matsys, it is probably this striking portrait - at the National Gallery in London, called The Ugly Duchess, also known as The Grotesque Old Woman:

Quentin Matsys, An Old Woman (The Ugly Duchess), c. 1513 The National Gallery, London.

The duchess may be grotesque, but she is also unforgettable…and painted by an artist with exceptional skills. But Quentin Matsys (1466-1530) wasn’t always a painter. He trained to be a blacksmith as a young man in nearby Leuven, following in his father’s footsteps. The only existing work from his blacksmithing days is this beautifully intricate well in the square nearby the Cathedral of Our Lady. It was forged at the end of the 15th century and is topped by none other than Silvius Brabo, Antwerp’s favorite hand-throwing hero.

A few years later, Quentin the blacksmith was a young-ish widower. According to legend, in 1508 he met and fell deeply in love with Catherine Heyns, the daughter of an accomplished Antwerp painter. Quentin decided that he would like to marry Catherine, but two things stood in his way. First, Catherine declared that she couldn’t possibly marry Quentin because blacksmithing was too loud for her delicate ears, and second Catherine’s father declared that no daughter of his was ever going to marry a lowly blacksmith.

And so Quentin the blacksmith turned to painting - and proved exceptionally skilled at it. One day, he snuck into the studio of Catherine Heyns’ artist father and painted a small fly on his prepared canvas. The artist Heyns returned to his studio, and swatted at the fly in an attempt to brush it from his canvas.

Upon realizing the illusion, he granted permission for Quentin and Catherine to marry: surely an artist who could fool an artist such as him had the skills to become a wonderfully successful painter.

The well of Quentin Matsys - inscribed along the bottom is “Love turned the blacksmith into a painter.”

There is a small room in the Rubenshuis that contains examples of some of the paintings in Rubens’s art collection. In this room stands a large decorated cabinet, with folding doors in the front that open to reveal dozens of small drawers. It is a wunderkammer: a cabinet of curiosities.

Wunderkammer have taken many forms over the centuries, from actual cabinets - like the one in Rubens’s house to large rooms filled with objects of wonder that had been collected from near and far, and their purpose, no matter the size or medium, was always the same: to tell tales. Every object in the cabinet of curiosity provided an opportunity to embellish a story, to preserve a legend, and - most importantly - to spark curiosity and imagination in the listener.

Quentin and Catherine Matsys lived a long and happy life in Antwerp. They had a family of ten children, several of whom became painters in their own right. Quentin would eventually be considered the founder of the Antwerp School of painting.

Now, there are records that show that Quentin Matsys may have been in training as an artist long before he met Catherine Heyns. However, the majority of his attributed works date to 1510 or later.

Standing in the Groenplaats, I wonder if it matters. At the end of the day, the people of Antwerp have an exquisite well, around which they have gathered for centuries, to sit and relax and talk with their friends, and they have a legend they can proudly share - one that just might spark curiosity and imagination in the city’s visitors - about the lowly blacksmith who love turned into a world-class painter.

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