The Skull of St. Elizabeth of Hungary; or, a Visit to Brussels

Yes, we're gonna talk about the skull of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  There's no point in tiptoeing around the topic; God knows I get several emails a week attacking me for ignoring the skull of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  Frankly, this discussion is long overdue, and will do us all a lot of good.  But first a little bit about one of my recent visit to Belgium, my birthplace and one of my favorite countries.  I like to think of Belgians as possessing all the charm of the French with almost none of the arrogance.  Which, come to think of it, makes Belgians even more charming than the French.

Brussels is, I admit, not consistently nice to look at.  The city is dominated by the massive 19th-century monstrosity of the Palais de Justice, which my friend Philip tells me is the largest building built in the 19th Century.  It's all swaggering, blocky, graceless neoclassicism -- an architectural Schwarzenegger.  Important Belgian ministries occupy a soulless, Stalinistic square which reminds you, in its concrete anonymity, of the famously ugly world headquarters of the Christian Science Church in Boston.

But to make up for it, there are lovely parks and dozens of highly individual, charming townhouses packed right next to each other.  Some are lacy Art Nouveau confections, some slightly tilted Low Country stepped-gable affairs, others just odd little structures personalized by generations of owners who've stuck on a wooden bay window here or an amateur architectural flourish there. 

The Belgian Museum of Fine Arts is strongly worth a visit, even if it has weird closing-hours regulations.  From 1 to 2 PM, for instance, the entire modern section closes, and a stream of art refugees pours into the other areas.  Then it's the 19th century's turn to shut down.  There are handy charts at several places in the museum explaining when the various sections close down.  But not why.  That would be un-Belgian. 

Anyway, if you can work out how to see them, you'll be treated to a room of fine Breughels, including the Fall of Icarus, in which Icarus famously plunges into the ocean deep in the middle ground of the painting, unnoticed by the passing ships and the farmer in the foreground.  David's Death of Marat is also here.  But the real discoveries for me were the collection of 19th-century Belgian painters, who were a very strange lot indeed.  Here's a gorgeous painting by Henri de Braekeleer.  When you see it in person, you notice that de Braekeleer has used every pane of glass to portray subtle shades of reflection and distortion.  It's a very lonely work, though, which might explain why de Braekeleer went insane after reaching mid-life. 

Fernand Khnopff specializes in eerie, detached Symbolist canvases that burrow into your subconscious.  And then there's James Ensor, the most important Belgian painter of the 19th century and one of the stranger figures in art history.  In his late 20s, he began painting fantastic, weirdly satirical pictures featuring carnival masks and skeletons.  The Belgian Fine Arts Museum contains a great example from this period, his immortal Two Skeletons Fighting over a Smoked Herring.

Continuing the theme of skeletons, we move on to the Brussels Cathedral of St. Michael & St. Gudula.  It's one of the rare European cathedrals I've visited in which most of the important artwork and chapels are accompanied by discreet yet informative signs, which always enhances the visit.  If you pay 1 Euro to visit the treasury, you can see plenty of lovely old crosses and monstrances.  And, err, a human skull in a bejewelled glass case.  It's the skull of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, patroness saint of, among other things, Teutonic knights and people mocked for their piety.  But those aren't the only holy bones on display -- you can also see a part of "St. Sebastian's" hand next to a lock of his hair, and the hipbone of the Belgian mystic Jan van Ruusbroec.  There's also a very unusual sculpture of him stepping on a woman's head, apparently in reference to his disputation of the heretical free-love teachings of a popular local seer. 

Finally, we popped over to Tervuren to see the Belgian Museum of Middle Africa.  It was opened in the early 20th century to persuade Belgians that the colonies in the Congo were important to Belgium, and to counter some of the nasty rumors that the native inhabitants were being, err, not so wonderfully treated by their colonial overlords.  The entrance foyer contains a series of wildly tasteless gilded sculptures, often featuring a tall European man or woman, holding symbolic implements, with a stunted Negro cringing at his or her side, looking up at "massa" with an expression of servile adoration.  The sculptures bear titles like "Belgium Bringing Well-Being to the Congo" or "The Congo Awakes to Civilization."  Of course, there's an explanatory plaque to the side, explaining very delicately that, while perhaps these sculptures no longer represent the most enlightened thinking, they are being left on display to avoid falsifying the historical record. 

I'll end the report with something special.  As you wander around the Colonial Museum Museum of Central Africa admiring the ritual implements, weapons, and textiles, you see something rather unexpected.  It's a jug in the form of a fat, drunk, red-cheeked little Englishman.  They're called Toby Jugs, and they've been traditional pieces of mass-produced British kitsch since the 18th century.  This particular one was found in the grave of a central African potentate.  According to the locals, the man must have been very powerful, because the possession of a Toby Jug signified extremely high status.

Which, of course, it still does to this day.

Comments

[Lillian Hammel]

In my day we simply called it the "Congo Museum" and since it was close to home and the International school it got a lot of traffic from parents of bored children on rainy days. And in Brussels there were a lot of them. Rainy days that is. You don't remember I am sure but you were pushed around the place in your fancy stroller several times.