Madonna
2010
Film, 93.5 x 85.5 cm .
Materials: oil on canvas
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Collection Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK7803_M507).
With Madonna, Koen van den Broek demonstrates his affinity with classical painting.Van den Broek originally made this painting for the exhibition Masterpieces in the MAS at Antwerp’s Museum Aan de Stroom. Here, the clear reference is to Jean Fouquet’s 1452 painting Madonna surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim. Fouquet’s use of color and compositional division indeed find echoes in Van den Broek’s Madonna, but the in-part abstracted execution is typical for Koen van den Broek’s oeuvre. This iconic image for the exhibition Masterpieces in the MAS and the accompanying book Visual Thinking. Five Centuries of Images in Antwerp, wherein visual thinking from the 19th century is thematised.
