Day 76 - Thursday 18 July - Bruegel et al

Thursday 18 July

Our first stop this morning was the church that was closed on Tuesday, Notre Dame de la Chapelle, which advertised something about Bruegel's paintings. There were no paintings there, but instead was a treasure hunt of 3D models of some of the figures from his paintings, which we thought was a bit irreverent. So we did our treasure hunt, then left for the Museum of Old Masters, to find some real paintings.

 The poster in the foyer of the church.
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 An 'everyday scene' from "12 Proverbs on Plates" , on show in Antwerp.

 The angel from "The Fall of the Rebel Angels", which we saw later in the day.

 From "The Fall of Icarus", which we saw later.
 

We found that this is part of a 3-in-1 museum complex, the others being musee fin-de-siecle (end of the century) and the musee magritte (modern art). We were there for nearly 6 hrs, with a break for lunch (byo on the terrace outside their cafe), and didn't finish the first museum. They have the world's 2nd largest collection of Bruegel paintings, and lots of others including G David,  PP Reubens, Rembrandt (whom we couldn't find).

 

Scattered around there was also an exhibition of sculpture by Wim Delvoye, including these lovely pigs.

And that was all. We checked on further train transport, put a load of washing through our hosts' machine, and all the usual things till bed time.

And we have to admit that, in 3.5 days of living in Brussels, we have not eaten one Brussels Sprout. We saw them in one supermarket, where you had to buy 500g, but our little fruit shop on the corner didn't have any. So there goes our resolve. I'm sure we'll have better luck later.