Think the Old Masters are boring? Think again.
At Brussels’ Old Masters Museum, saints get dramatic, sinners get gruesome, and every panel is packed with detail you’ll want to zoom in on.
You’ll find eerie Flemish Primitives with haunting expressions and luminous Dutch Golden Age paintings that feel almost photographic. It’s a crash course in drama, devotion, and devilish little side characters.
This museum is part of the complex of Belgium’s Royal Museums of Fine Arts, along with the Magritte Museum and the Fin-de-Siecle Museum.
In this one, you’ll find artworks from quite a few eras: the Flemish Primitives, the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Dutch Golden Age, and Neo-Classicism.
The standout old master works are by Roger van der Weyden, Hieronymous Bosch, Rembrandt, Peter Bruegel the Elder, Hans Memling, Rubens, and Jacque-Louis David.
In fact, the museum boasts the world’s second largest collection of Bruegel paintings.
In this guide to the Old Masters Museum, I’ll give you an easy overview of the museum layout, point you to the must see masterpieces, and share practical tips for making your visit smooth.
Overview & Tips
The main entrance is at Rue de la Régence 3, in the upper town’s Sablon neighborhood. You’ll step into a large central hall.
The Old Masters Museum is located on level 1, just up the staircase or escalator in front of you. The galleries are arranged along one long rectangular floor.
Before you head in, stop by the information desk to grab a free map.
You can also watch a short video on Bruegel’s artworks in the nearby digital room. It’s a great intro before diving into the collection.
The museum’s artworks are displayed in chronological order, counter-clockwise. You’ll start off with the Flemish Primitives.
In high season, you may want to pre-book a skip the line ticket. You can also purchase a combination ticket that includes the Magritte Museum. And entry is included with the Brussels City Card.
I would plan to spend at least one hour in the museum.
Guide To The Old Masters Museum: What To See
Here are a sampling of the key masterpieces in the order in which you’ll see them on display:
Van der Weyden, Portrait of Anthony of Burgundy
Roger van der Weyden was a leading Early Netherlandish painter known for his emotionally intense religious works and meticulous attention to detail. His portraits are especially celebrated for their expressive figures and refined realism.
In this sensitive portrait, young Prince Anthony of Burgundy wears a black coat and dark red cap. His pale face and hand emerge from a dark background.
Anthony was quite the Renaissance man, whose sense of style impressed even the Medici family in Florence.
The artists captures his subject in all his glory. He holds an arrow indicating his bravery and knightly honors.
Van der Weyden, Pieta
Pietà is a small, emotionally charged panel that shows the Virgin Mary cradling Christ’s lifeless body.
Accompanied by Saint John and Mary Magdalene, they’re set against a stark landscape with a prominent cross. The composition is significant for its profound expression of grief and meticulous attention to detail.
Technical analyses, including infrared reflectography and dendrochronology, support the attribution of this work to van der Weyden himself.
The painting’s intensity and balanced composition are considered on par with the artist’s more renowned Descent from the Cross at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
Bosch, Triptych of the Temptations of Saint Anthony
Bosch was a quirky and visionary artist, who brought a fantastical strain to the sober realism of Flemish art.
In this painting, the central figure is St. Anthony. The lives of the saints were very popular back then thanks to the Golden Legend, which was treated like the Bible.
Anthony was a hermit saint who withdrew to the desert. You see him looking haunted, as if he’s wondering what he got himself into.
But the saint is just the pretext for Bosch to add in his usual throng of monsters. All around, bizarre little creatures try to distract Anthony. He tries to resist, but is carried off by airborn devils.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus and Cupid
Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter known for his court portraits, mythological nudes, and close association with the Protestant Reformation.
This painting represents Venus and her son Cupid. In the story, a young, winged Cupid cries at his mother’s side.
He was stung by bees after steeling their honey. Venus reminds him that the pain he inflicts on humans with his arrows is far more painful.
Venus is not really shown in classic Renaissance style. She looks a bit more Gothic. Her fashionable hair style is beautifully executed and gives the painting a sensual feel.
If you haven’t yet seen one of the 50 or so Adam and Eve paintings by Cranach, the museum has one just for you!
Hans Memling, The Martydom of St. Sebastian
Hans Memling was a student of Van der Weyden. He’s known for his serene, idealized portraits and devotional panels. They blend Flemish precision with a gentle, almost spiritual intimacy.
Memling purposefully disregard the Renaissance’s demands for 3D realism, so admired in Italy at the time.
In this painting, Memling’s Sebastian is as quiet and still as Bosch’s devil is turbulent. Sebastian was an early Christian killed by pagans.
You see him punctured with arrows by a serene firing squad in a serene landscape. The painting has a meditative mood, appropriate for the church in which it was hung in Bruges.
Memling also has a pair of beautiful husband and wife portraits in the museum.
Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of Icarus
The Bruegel Room (Room 68) is one of the museum’s true highlights, and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus marks a turning point in Western art.
For the first time, landscape isn’t just a backdrop for religious stories. It takes center stage as the subject itself.
This is Bruegel’s only known mythological painting, inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It tells the tragic tale of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. The wax in his wings melted, and he fell into the sea.
But here, his fall is barely noticed. Icarus’s legs vanish into the water in a quiet corner of the canvas, while the world goes on—plowman, shepherd, and sailor undisturbed.
It’s a powerful reminder of how easily human ambition and tragedy can go unnoticed in the rhythms of everyday life.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels
This impressively crowded composition reveals Bruegel’s debt to Bosch. And also to the curiosities brought back from the New World via trading and exploring.
The subject is taken from the apocalypse. It shows the moment when the angels who rebelled against God and sided with Satan are cast from heaven into hell.
In the center, the Archangel Michael fights a seven-headed dragon. The battle among the angels and demons rages on. Other strange hybrid creatures recall curiosity cabinets of the age.
The painting conveys the sense of unrest and disorder of the time. The fight is a tight one, mimicking the then-current disputes between Catholics and Protestants.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Census at Bethlehem
In this painting, Bruegel sets a bible scene, the birth of Jesus. The viewer has a bird’s eye view of the unfolding action.
There is the usual crowd of peasants going about their daily life. They are essentially oblivious to the wonderful birth about to take place.
Half the works in the Bruegel Rooom are by the painters eldest son. Because the demand for his father was so high, the son found himself churning out copies of pop’s best works.
You can compare his The Fight Between Carnival and Lent with his father’s painting from 60 years earlier.
Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Father Jean-Charles Della Faille
Along with Rubens and Jacob Jordaens, Anthony van Dyck was one of the three major artists of 17th-century Antwerp.
A gifted student and assistant in Rubens’ workshop, van Dyck quickly developed a style of his own. It was more refined, elegant, and emotionally attuned.
Though he painted religious and mythological scenes throughout his career, Van Dyck earned lasting fame for his luminous portraits. He had a rare ability to capture both the outer likeness and the inner life of his sitters, often with a soft, almost poetic quality.
In this portrait, Van Dyck presents his subject surrounded by the tools of his trade as a geometrician and astronomer. It’s not just a likeness. It’s a visual narrative of intellect and identity.
The instruments signal the sitter’s profession, while the calm expression and subtle lighting reflect Van Dyck’s gift for psychological insight.
Rembrandt, Portrait of Nicolas van Bambeeck
Rembrandt, of course, is the most famous artist of the Dutch Golden Age.
The museum has one of his lovely portraits, of a rich merchant and co-founder of the Dutch East India Company. It’s a complement to the portrait of his wife, Agatha Bas.
Rembrandt painted these portraits while he was working on his masterpiece — The Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum.
The subject’s pose was inspired by the presumed portrait of Aristo by the Venetian artist Titian.
Peter Paul Rubens, Monumental Altarpieces
Room 53 is filled with massive Rubens oil paintings.
Rubens was a great Belgian painter of the Baroque. He was known for his voluptuous nudes, drama-filled scenes, and painterly bravado.
You might not know this, but Rubens was not only a prolific painter but a diplomat who traveled a lot.
He was very active in the context of the Counter-Reformation. The church’s goal was to win back its flock through art.
To produce these altarpieces, Rubens had to use his entire workshop. Though he still painted the most important figures and put final flourishes on the works.
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary has all the characteristics of the Baroque. It’s a dynamic composition that draws Mary, clad in swirling blue, up to the heavens.
The Ascent To Calvary is an 18 foot tall canvas showing life size figures on the way to Christ’s crucifixion.
The scene ripples with motion. Christ stumbles, the sky threatens, and men with seemingly steroid enhanced muscles ride horses.
David, The Death of Marat
This is my favorite painting in the museum. And it’s one of the most powerful propaganda images in Western art history.
In a scene ripped from the headlines, David depicted Jean-Paul Marat, the radical journalist and revolutionary. He was stabbed to death in his bathtub by the conservative fanatic Charlotte Corday.
David was a close friend and one of the last people to see Marat alive. This quiet painting was his tribute to a fallen comrade.
You can see Marat’s blood tinting the bathwater as he clutches a final patriotic note. The note was an invention by David meant to frame Marat as noble and Corday as even more villainous.
David casts Marat as a martyred, almost Christ-like figure. His ghostly milky pallor, the dramatic light, and the raw, pared-down setting create a sense of stark realism and emotional weight.
And yet it’s still so human. The way Marat’s head tilts. The rough wooden box. The ink-stained fingers.
David stripped away all the clutter and left only the message: revolution has a cost and this man paid it in blood and nobility.
Modern Artworks
The Museum of Modern Art (covering 19th to 21st century art works) was closed in 2011 due to renovation and space issues. Since then, the Royal Museums’ modern and contemporary works are displayed in the Old Masters Museum and the Fin-de-Siècle Museum.
Works on display are rotated. When I visited, I saw pieces by Francis Bacon, Paul Delvaux, James Ensor, and Louis Van Lint.
I liked the Bacon best. The seated pope was likely inspired by Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, which Bacon famously reinterpreted many times.
The figure sits rigidly in a throne-like chair, hands clenched near the chest in a gesture of tension or psychological conflict. The formal pose suggests power or control. But it’s undercut by the distorted features and raw brushwork.
Two owls perch behind the figure, adding an unsettling, symbolic presence. Their watchful, mirrored stance could suggest judgment, surveillance, or ironic detachment. You have the decided feeling of existential dread.
Tips For Visiting The Old Masters Museum
Address: Rue de la Régence 3, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Hours:
- Tuesday – Friday: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
- Saturday & Sunday: 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
- Closed Monday
Tickets:
- Adults (19–64 years): €10
- Seniors (65+): €8
- Students (under 26): €3
- Children (under 18): Free
Pro Tips:
Plan to spend about an hour or so at the museum. You’ll have to check your backpack in a free locker.
When you’re done, take a break and come back and see the Magritte Museum in the same building.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to the Old Masters Museum of Belgium. Pin it for later.
