VisitFlanders launches digital museum and podcast series on Flemish art masters

As Belgium cautiously reopens museums and businesses, the tourism board VisitFlanders continues promoting Flemish cultural heritage through digital channels. The Stay at Home Museum is a digital platform featuring video tours by directors, curators, and experts on Flemish masters like van Eyck, Bruegel, and Rubens, showcasing artworks from major museums and revealing secrets. It also offers personalized itinerary planning for future travel, guided by three virtual experts: Bacchus (gastronomy and cultural events), Nicolaas (architecture), and Venus (fashion and culture). Additionally, a podcast series titled "Jan van Eyck è stato qui" on Spreaker explores the artist's life and works, focusing on his birthplace Maaseik (1390), his death in Bruges (1441), his role as founder of the Flemish school and master of Gothic painting, his early career in miniature illustration (including a Book of Hours for William of Bavaria), his perfection of oil painting technique, and major works such as the Ghent Altarpiece (Polittico dell'Agnello Mistico) in Ghent, the Arnolfini Portrait at the National Gallery in London, and Portrait of a Man with a Red Turban (also in London, possibly a self-portrait). The podcast covers cities like Bruges and Ghent, which are dedicating 2020 and part of 2021 to celebrating his painting, along with sounds, colors, culinary traditions, and his legacy in Flanders.