Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools Showcases 300 Years of Rare Flemish Artworks at ROM

TORONTO, March 11, 2025 – This summer, visitors to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) will be transported to the golden age in Flanders as ROM presents Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, which brings to life the vibrancy and abundant creativity of the Southern Netherlands through a visual feast of stunning medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art and objects.

Featuring over 80 exquisitely rendered oil paintings, rare decorative art objects, and intricate bronze sculptures, Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools – running at ROM from June 28, 2025, to January 18, 2026 – offers a whirlwind tour of Flanders from 1400 to 1700, through the work of the most prominent artists of the era.

Drawing from Belgium-based The Phoebus Foundation’s world-class collection of Flemish art, the exhibition offers the chance to view rarely exhibited pieces from renowned artists of the era, including Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Hans Memling, Jan Gossaert, Jan Brueghel, Clara Peeters, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Francken II, and Michaelina Wautier, among many others. 

“Teeming with sumptuous beauty and rich symbolism, Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools captures the brilliance of this artistic period and the many ways in which it continues to shape our world today,” said Josh Basseches, ROM Director & CEO. “The exhibition’s paintings, sculpture, and silverwork also speak to timeless themes – from globalization to human nature – that are bound to resonate with a contemporary audience.”

“This exhibition transports visitors to historical Flanders – a small but mighty society that was seeking to establish itself in a fast-changing, increasingly globalized world. Artists played a crucial role, inventing new genres, styles, and even the art market as we know it. It is fascinating to look back and recognize how influential these artists really were, and how what happened during this period shaped the world we live in today,” said Chloé M. Pelletier, Curator of European Art (before 1800) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and guest curator of the presentation at ROM. 

“As our Flemish masterpieces prepare to take center stage at the Royal Ontario Museum, they bring with them a whirlwind of passion, rebellion, and ingenuity. This exhibition isn’t just about looking at art – it’s about immersing yourself in 300 years of audacity, beauty, and raw human emotion,” said Katharina Van Cauteren, Executive Director of The Phoebus Foundation.

The cosmopolitan cities of the Southern Netherlands in the 1400s serve as the starting point for the exhibition, as visitors are situated within the geography of this dynamic region, then home to Europe’s intellectual and business elite. Throughout the course of the early modern period, cities such as Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp were major hubs for trade and commerce, with tremendous cultural capital as well as artistic influence.

The widespread impact that the arts of this region had on visual culture is explored through the stylistic inventions that artists used to tell stories – from new ways of painting religious scenes, and important advances including the invention of portraiture, to genre scenes of everyday life that broke new aesthetic ground.

The section on Greek and Roman mythology and its influence on the arts includes the most monumental artwork in the exhibition – Diana Hunting with her Nymphs, a Rubens oil painting of the goddess Diana chasing prey with a spear in hand, commissioned by Spanish king Philip IV for his new hunting lodge near Madrid.

The intersection of the arts and sciences then comes into focus as developments in natural history – including the more holistic approach to the study of anatomy – lent itself to new methods of depicting the human body. 

The immense political upheaval in Europe in the 1500s – with ongoing wars and revolutions, including the Protestant Reformation – had an enormous impact on the arts, with many of the most influential artists creating works in response that spoke to the turmoil of the age. 

Finally, the last section takes viewers into a recreation of a cabinet of curiosities, illustrating the way in which historic notions of art collecting paved the way for the modern-day concept of a museum.

Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools underscores how the region’s dynamic artistic approaches showcase universal human experiences that transcend time periods – defining our understanding of images for centuries to come and continuing to impact contemporary visual culture. 

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated 432-page art book written and edited by Katharina Van Cauteren, Executive Director of The Phoebus Foundation. From Memling to Rubens: The Golden Age of Flanders offers an in-depth exploration of Flemish art and is available in both English and French editions at the ROM Boutique.

Membership
ROM Members will have the first opportunity to visit Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, on Friday, June 27, and Saturday, June 28, 2025. Tickets are free for ROM members. Visit joinROM.ca for more information about ROM membership.

Credits and curatorial team
Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks is co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp (Belgium). The exhibition is curated by Katharina Van Cauteren, Executive Director of The Phoebus Foundation, and ROM’s presentation is curated by Chloé M. Pelletier, Curator of European Art (before 1800) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Acknowledgements
This exhibition is generously supported by the Royal Exhibitions Circle.

Image credits: Peter Paul Rubens and Workshop (1577-1640), Diana Hunting with Her Nymphs, about 1636–1637. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp, Belgium.