ANTWERP, Belgium — The city palace of Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens is partly reopening this weekend, allowing Antwerp to show off the life and work of perhaps its most famous citizen.
The Rubens House may not have as many paintings as Madrid’s Prado museum or the canvas surface spread around the port city’s Cathedral of Our Lady. But if there is any place that Rubens himself felt more at home, it was his own house in Antwerp looking out over his garden.
While the core of the house remains closed until at least 2030 for ongoing renovations, the dazzling new welcome center and the redesigned garden will open doors on Friday.
What it lacks in actual paintings — a self-portrait is the only major piece on view during the renovations — it hopes to make up in atmosphere, exuding the spirit of the master who bought the house in 1610 and made it his studio and workshop, which gave birth to many of his masterpieces.
The garden provides an outdoor space between the reception center and the main house — a route for the visitor to move between past and present and to contemplate the world of Rubens. It features nearly 17,500 plants and in a nod to Belgian fashion, Antwerp-based fashion designer Dries van Noten was consulted on the colour scheme.
Recreating the original Rubens garden was a difficult undertaking for garden conservator Klara Alen because the original plans did not survive. One source of inspiration could be the 1640 painting by Rubens and his workshop titled “The Walk in the Garden,” which portrays him walking with his family near the garden pavilion.
Some of his letters mention orange and lime trees and figs, said Alen. “We also poured through historical documents to see what was planted in that time, but also wanted to uncover new information and that’s where we came upon tulips.”
“In this garden the best is yet to come,” she added. “We’ve planted more that 1,000 historical tulip bulbs that we will see in the spring.”
The garden provides visitors with a new palette of colours for each season: the bright tulips of spring, the greens of summer and the golds of autumn. The current garden includes marigolds, roses, magnolias, figs, black oaks and a multitude of citrus trees.
