Sous le ciel de Paris

It's the beginning of June and I'm in Europe for two months of bibliographically-induced merriment. The city of Antwerp boasts perhaps the world's only research institute dedicated to one artist, the Centrum Rubenianum. Tucked away behind the Rubens House off the Meir, its extensive library and archives harbour everything you always wanted to know about Dutch and Flemish art (but were afraid to ask). A lively scholarly community is active there, from museum curators to numerous North American PhD fellows from Princeton, Brown and Bryn Mawr.

I will peruse several city archives, not least in my church, and indulge in frites with plenty of mayonnaise, hopefully without precipitating a cardiac arrest.

This weekend however, I am off to Paris to visit the Musée du Louvre's Département des Arts Graphiques, which holds Rubens' portrait sketch of his confessor (probably). Ophovius' tomb monument graces my church.

After wining and dining on the boulevards of gay Paris, and attending an opera performance at Versailles, naturellement, I will return to the banks of the Scheldt to give a presentation at the Rubenianum.

Then, off to Amsterdam to visit their offsite depot in Lelystad. Oh, the glamour!