Eternal Spring. Gardens and Tapestries in the Renaissance

Who still remembers Cardinal Antoine de Granvelle? His memory is still alive in Besançon, where the Musée du Temps occupies the former family palace and where the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie rightly prides itself on the magnificent Bronzino that adorned his father’s funeral chapel until the Revolution before becoming one of the most beautiful Italian paintings in French public collections! For its part, Mechelen has not forgotten its first archbishop either, and has dedicated a magnificent exhibition to him at the Hof van Busleyden Museum, focusing on the treasures of his collection, centred on superb tapestries (ill. 1 and 2). It must be said that these alone are more than enough reason to visit Mechelen, where the museum has only one of them, still proudly bearing the cardinal’s coat of arms.

For a few months, The Battle of Tunis can therefore stand alongside real treasures from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna - a natural partner for such an exhibition - where numerous relics from the Granvelle collection are preserved, which joined that of a voracious amateur: Emperor Rudolph II, whom the Louvre is preparing to celebrate very soon in a second exhibition that will certainly be worth a visit after the one in Mechelen. "A Perpetual Spring" complements another event in Besançon, which was primarily interested in the political figure of the famous cardinal: "Antoine de Granvelle, the Purple Eminence. Images of a Renaissance Man of Power" explored from November 2017 to March 2018 the dissemination of the prelate’s image, from the 16th to the 20th century, without forgetting his dark legend [1]. The idea here is to explore the artistic…