Museum Mayer Van den Bergh

Save

Let us know if these details are incorrect

Lonely Planet review

Museum Mayer Van den Bergh occupies a simulated 16th-century townhouse, built in 1904 by the mother of Fritz Mayer Van den Bergh, a prosperous art connoisseur who had died a few years earlier aged 41. His highly prized collection of sculptures and paintings, including works by Quinten Matsijs and Cornelius De Vos, form the core of the museum.

The collection's most famous piece is Pieter Breugel the Elder's Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), an allegorical painting in which a demented woman roams a grotesque war-torn landscape marked by demons and monsters. This is one of Breugel's most Bosch-like paintings and interpretations of its meaning vary - some say it's an allegory of misogyny, others of human madness.