The extremely extensive collections left by Count Guglielmo Coronini Cronberg include a number of true masterpieces: paintings, sculptures, furniture, jewellery and other precious decorative art objects that testify to the evolution of taste over the past centuries and the refined collecting activities of the Coronini family.
Discover the unique masterpieces that are the pride of our museum!
The two panels, which depict Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and King David receiving water from the wells of Bethlehem on the one side, and St. Gertrude of Nivelles and St. Hadrian of Nicomedia on the other, were the side panels of a small triptych, the central panel of which has not survived and probably depicted an Adoration of the Magi.
This theme, of which the two biblical episodes in the panels were considered to be a prefiguration, was in fact very popular in the mercantile city of Antwerp, where in the early decades of the 16th century a group of artists, most of whom remained anonymous, developed a particular style of painting, known as “Antwerp Mannerism”. This was characterised by crowded compositions, figures in elegant and artificial poses dressed in elaborate clothes of exotic taste, the use of bright and iridescent colours, and a strange mixture of late Gothic elements and Renaissance motifs in the architecture.
This original language is accentuated by the technical virtuosity of Flemish painting, particularly effective in the realistic rendering of fabrics, furs, feathers, metals and jewellery.
