BRUSSELS.- The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium are pleased to announce that they will host an exhibition of some fifty paintings from the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The exhibition entitled Paintings from the British Royal Collection: Bruegel to Rubens will be shown at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels from 16 May to 21 September, 2008. The exhibition will previously have been shown at The Queen’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh and then subsequently at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace in London.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium are pleased to announce that they will host an exhibition of some fifty paintings from the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The exhibition entitled Paintings from the British Royal Collection: Bruegel to Rubens will be shown at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels from 16 May to 21 September, 2008. The exhibition will previously have been shown at The Queen’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh and then subsequently at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace in London. The exhibition, centred on the paintings produced in our region from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries comprises major works by Hans Memling, Quinten Metsys, Jan Gossaert, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Paul Bril, Peter Paul Rubens and Antoon Van Dyck. These works will be displayed alongside relevant masterpieces from our own collections.

For example The Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the British Royal Collection will for the first time take its place beside The Numbering at Bethlehem from the Museum of Fine Arts collection, thus providing a unique opportunity to see first hand the way in which Bruegel magnificently depicted biblical scenes in the snowy Brabant landscape in these two paintings. h royal collection is renowned for its great holding of works by Rubens and Van Dyck, both artists having spent time in England, and with Van Dyck having been employed at the court of Charles I for nine years. The paintings by Rubens will be a further attraction of the exhibition and the visitor will be able to admire in particular the talent – somewhat less known – of the artist as a painter of landscapes such as can be seen in the sumptuous compositions of Summer and Winter or The Farm at Laken. One will also be able to admire three portraits among which the one of Van Dyck who as a young man worked in Rubens’ studio. One will also be able to see the sketch for The Assumption of the Virgin, - the monumental altarpiece from the Church of the Discalced Carmelites now housed in the RMFAB.

The religious compositions, the portraits by Van Dyck, scenes of peasant fairs by David Teniers, or the fascinating Young Man at the Window by an anonymous painter, all serve to provide a further rich insight into painting in the Southern Netherlands from the heritage of Charles V to the Peace Treaty of 1648. See also the Internet site of the Royal Collection