Sometimes while viewing an exhibition for the first time, one is fortunate enough to experience an unexpected shift of attitude. Such was my experience viewing the new show of Flemish Art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Expecting dark, heavy paintings of baby Jesus and his doting mother, along with processions of nuns and devotees, I wasn’t prepared for the sheer beauty of the entire exhibition.

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

At the top of a long, broad staircase flanked by tall columns stretches a massive lilac-painted wall. In the center, a color-drenched, huge still-life of draping food: wild boar, hanging rabbits, a basket of heaping ripe fruit, dead and live birds, artichokes, asparagus and cauliflowers. Here is A Pantry with Game (1640) by Frans Snyders. Crowning the painting is the title of the exhibit in French and English: “Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools.” In that first look, I was caught, and for the rest of the exhibit, held.

Rounding the corner into the first room, titled God is in the Details, you are confronted by a deep Venetian red room with religious paintings in heavy gold frames depicting varying scenes of the Christ child and the Madonna. This is to be expected in a world that had just come through the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War looking to Christianity for succor and guidance. Witness an intricate carving in the alabaster of the Pieta (1550). The delicate hands, Mary’s pained face and Christ’s dead body lying stretched in her arms is the work of a master (artist unknown).

There are paintings by the familiar—Rubens, van Dyck and Bruegel—all richly detailed and deftly painted, but surprises abound in each room. In........

© Observer