Before glamorous 19th-century Paris or menacing 20th-century New York, there was Antwerp in the 16th century – the city of Bruegel and then Rubens, a river port which played politics to become a dazzling world city.

Join Michael Pye, author of Antwerp: The Glory Years, for this talk which will explore the sensational history of the town where Bruegel and Rubens worked.

Antwerp’s markets guaranteed credit for the known world whilst its scandals went around Europe, dinner table by dinner table.

Books and music and art created in Antwerp decorated Medici palaces, American chapels and helped kings when they went wooing.

It was the city of the deal which survived sieges and fires and mutinies to leave a double legacy: wonderful art, and the machinery to sell it.

In this fascinating talk from Michael Pye, you’ll delve into all this rich history and discover more about the backdrop to our current Bruegel to Rubens exhibition.