Snijders & Rockox Huis

Keizerstraat 10 – 12, Antwerp

House of Snijders & Rockox

The renewed Snijders & Rockox museum has  opened in February 2018. It was previousy known as Rockox House. The building was owned by Nicolaas Rockox (1560 – 1640), a very well-known person in Antwerp. He was 8 times a mayor, an art collector and a close friend of Rubens. The museum has been enlarged with the house De Fortuyne where Frans Snijders (1579 – 1657) lived. A painter with animal painting as expertise. He has painted the animals, fruit and vegetables on various paintings.

Multimedia

With the renovation and expansion of the museum, they also paid attention to new applications. You can choose between a paper or digital guide (or a human; o) The digital version is very cool, you get a tablet with which you point its camera at a painting and you get all the information from it. Another nice feature is if you ask for headphones, you will hear an introduction to each room every time. Figures such as Nicolaas Rockox, his wife Adriana and Frans Snijders tell you all about their time here in their house.

Museum

Then we have not yet talked about the many masterpieces that hang here. Several pieces by Snijders of course. Works by Jordaens, Van Dyck and Rubens hang side by side in a brotherly manner. The three baroque masters. It was nice to see the ring from the exhibition “Brilliant Desire” from the MAS (I guided this exhibition too). If you want some relaxation between all those masterpieces, try the digital screen with the proverbs of Pieter II Brueghel. Here you discover the more than 100 proverbs that are incorporated in the work, the detail on the painting is also projected on the wall.

Garden

My biggest favorite (although it is difficult to choose here) is the garden of the house “Den Gulden Rinck” from Rockox. Unfortunately, the entrance door has been changed and you can no longer catch a glimpse of the garden from the street. Now you have to go through the museum. But it is worth it! Rockox was interested in botanics, he owned books by Dodoens and Clusius. In the summer there were citrus trees in his garden, one of the most exclusive things you could have in your garden back then. It has been reconstructed from a seventeenth century city garden. Orange trees and grapes can still be admired.

Musical family

New (but temporary) is the music room that has been set up in collaboration with the Museum Vleeshuis. The wealthy Duarte family had a passion for music. They organized house concerts that attracted many well-known people and later spoke of fame about the musical qualities of the family members. Here is a virginal of the Ruckers family, another well-known Antwerp family. You can choose from a few pieces of music to play here.