Stained glass and the (re-) creation of an ideal past: the Mayer van den Bergh collection in Antwerp around 1900

The Mayer van den Bergh Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, contains a fine collection of stained-glass panels, mainly Southern Netherlandish roundels from the Early Modern period. As an internationally active private collector in the late nineteenth century, Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858-1901) maintained close contacts with art dealers, museum professionals and other private collectors from various European countries. In the eventual museum, the collector’s mother Henriëtte van den Bergh (1838-1920) integrated the stained-glass panels into the decorative scheme of its historicizing interiors. In this paper I explored Fritz and Henriëtte Mayer van den Bergh’s collecting and display strategies, traced their underlying motivations, and reconstructed the function historical stained glass served within the overall conception of the museum. The paper, including a complete catalogue of the Mayer van den Bergh collection of stained glass, was published in Revista de História da Arte. Série W 3 (2015), pp. 59-75