EUROPALIA ESPAÑA
Ydáñez in Amberes

Museum Snijders&Rockox house, Antwerp, 17 October 2025 - 18 January 2026

In this expo, the 17th century meets the present in a blistering confrontation. Spanish artist Santiago Ydáñez brings his expressive paintings and sculptures to the city of Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens - not to honour, but to dialogue. With raw brushstrokes, evocative faces and magnified details, he breathes new life into classic themes of religion, identity and mortality. His work is physical, intense and unflinchingly contemporary. In this exhibition, the Baroque is not remembered, but relived - with all the beauty, pain and power that goes with it.

Spanish artist Santiago Ydáñez (b. 1967, Jaén) breathes new life into the Baroque with a power and intensity that will not leave you unmoved. His monumental paintings and sculptures are not a nostalgic look back, but an emotional reinterpretation of 17th-century grandmasters Rubens, Van Dyck and Snijders - but through a contemporary, unflattering lens.

Ydáñez's work balances on the border between figuration and distortion. He takes classical portraits and religious scenes out of context, magnifies details, and blurs faces into shadows or masks. His brushstrokes are coarse, his colours intense, his compositions confrontational. What remains is a visual language that both pays homage to the Baroque and questions that same tradition. Beauty and grotesque go hand in hand, elegance gives way to physicality and emotion.

What makes Ydáñez unique is his ability not just to quote the canon of art history, but to question it. His work asks questions about identity, religion and mortality - themes that are as relevant today as they were in Rubens' time. In a world full of digital perfection and superficiality, he offers a physical, almost tangible experience of art. His paintings are not pictures, but confrontations.

Even in his sculptures and installations, this tension remains palpable. Classical busts are distorted, religious figures stripped of their loftiness. The transition from canvas to three-dimensional form intensifies the physical intensity of his work. It is as if Baroque has stepped out of the museum and is looking you straight in the eye.

Santiago Ydáñez is not a copyist, but a translator of the Baroque into the present. His work is expressive, direct and deeply rooted in the painterly tradition - but with a contemporary urgency that won't let you go. He reminds us what art is capable of: confusing, delighting, and above all - touching.

Restoration Jordaens
Until April 2026

The nearby St James' Church is currently under scaffolding, soon to return to its full baroque splendour. It is not only the church building that is undergoing a metamorphosis, but also the art treasures. An absolute highlight of this thorough restoration campaign involves the masterpiece 'The Appointment of Peter as Chief Shepherd of the Church by the Antwerp painter Jacques Jordaens (1593-1678)'.

This Flemish masterpiece will receive a facelift during 2025, in an open studio at the Snijders&Rockoxhuis. Restorers will remove the yellowed varnish layer by layer and repair all damages with precision, so that the monumental painting will soon shine like ever before!

Planning attendance restorers

Restorers Caroline Meert, Sara Dewilde and Kaat Sneiders each work on Thursday, Friday and one day in the weekend.
Via the table below, we will keep you informed and you will discover, month by month, which days these skilled ladies are busy.

Wanderlust: Old landscapes in a new perspective
From 13 December 2024

Each painting in this museum once started as a blank, white canvas. What was empty was eventually filled by the artist with colour, form, and meaning. The simple white surface gained depth through a skillful use of perspective, and the void space was filled with evocative layers of imagery. From stream to hill to horizon, the landscape unfurled further, into a world that demanded to be inhabited by figures of all kinds.

In this temporary collection display, 17^th-century landscapes unfold as vibrant spectacles. Nature takes center stage, with majestic mountains, picturesque villages, and endless skies serving as a dramatic backdrop. Populated by humans and animals, each painting becomes a carefully staged scene in which light and shadow intensify emotions and tensions.

How realistic are these vistas? Or are they entirely products of the painter’s imagination? The answer lies somewhere in between. Each work invites close inspection, offering a moment for reflection and a chance to lose oneself in an alternate reality.

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Opulence Distilled. April 27 - October 1, 2024

Masterpieces from the oeuvre of Jan Davidsz. de Heem (Utrecht, 1606 - Antwerp, 1684)

Do you love pure beauty? Are you enraptured by a painted illusion of nature? Are you fascinated by a breathtaking rendering of details? Then this first retrospective of De Heem is a must-see.

Jan Davidsz. de Heem (Utrecht, 1606 - Antwerp, 1684) was an exceptional artist in his time, working in the Netherlands, a divided region since the Fall of Antwerp in 1585. As a painter he worked across national boundaries to elevate the beauty of still life painting to its zenith, insisting on high quality, continually pursuing renewal and maintaining the vitality of the genre.

Dr. Fred G. Meijer is curator.

BAROQUE INFLUENCERS. JESUITS, RUBENS AND THE ART OF PERSUASION

22 April 08:00 – 16 July 17:00

A special exhibition at three historic locations forms the heart of the festival. It will allow you to experience the baroque in a surprising way. 

To win over their audience, the Jesuits developed a unique visual culture that was influential as far away as China. The central exhibition shows how the leading figures of Antwerp in the long seventeenth century thought, dreamed, worked and prayed.

One such protagonist was Peter Paul Rubens. At the request of the Jesuits, he created thirty-nine ceiling paintings in St Charles Borromeo Church. These were lost in the fire of 1718. During Baroque Influencers, we will bring that lost art treasure back to life at The Snijders&Rockox House. We will do so by using more than forty domestic and foreign masterpieces by Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob de Wit and Daniel Seghers.

Furthermore, the exhibition in St Charles Borromeo Church gathers devotional prints, etchings and books from the collections of various heritage institutions, including the Ruusbroec Society. In the Nottebohm Hall of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, you can admire a reconstruction of the rich interior of the Sodality and the baroque chapel it once was. 

The exhibition will be held in three locations: Museum Snijders&Rockoxhuis, the galleries of St Charles Borromeo Church, and the Nottebohm Hall of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library*