The collections
The Museum Plantin-Moretus conserves a multiple collections. Old printed books and manuscripts, printing presses and tools, paintings, prints and drawings, furniture and paintings and several archives.
Rosewood curio cabinet
The museum has a rich collection of antique furniture. The rosewood and ebony curio cabinet definitely belonged to the Moretus family. The cabinet is supported by four Moors – a learned allusion to the name Moretus.
©LUCID
Cantoren
The Museum Plantin-Moretus holds a rich collection of antique furniture. Three pieces can be identified with certainty as having belonged to the Moretus family: a small table inlaid with tortoiseshell and two seventeenth-century art cabinets. This is one of those two cabinets.
Art cabinets - known by the older term cantoren - were a well-known Antwerp product well into the seventeenth century and were exported on a large scale. These luxury pieces of furniture were used to store valuable documents and small precious objects such as jewellery, coins and textiles. For this reason, they often concealed secret drawers and false bottoms.
©LUCID
'Moors Figures'
This cabinet, dating from around 1675, is made of rosewood and ebony, and richly decorated with tortoiseshell, ivory and gilt bronze. The lower part is “supported” by four African figures, known at the time as moren (“Moors”), a learned reference to the name Moretus. This wordplay tells us that the piece was commissioned by a member of the Moretus family. On the white marble panels, Hans Jordaens painted 23 biblical scenes.
©LUCID
