Antverpia Pictorum Nutrix
by BOEYERMANS, Theodor, Oil on canvas, 188 x 454 cm
In 1665, Boeyermans executed the programmatic allegorical painting Antverpia Pictorum Nutrix for the newly founded Antwerp Academy. It symbolized the ideals of the new institution clearly and explicitly: painting in Antwerp could only maintain its status if it kept to the classic rules of the humanist theory of art and the great national models of Rubens and Van Dyck. This programme also seems to explain very clearly the stylistic ideas of Boeyermans and many of his contemporaries.