Collection ym

In the early 17th century, engraver Guillaume du Tielt created a beautiful map of the city of Ypres during the siege. The map of the siege of Ypres can be seen in the Yper Museum.

The Venetian Lantern is one of Louise's many portraits of children. The canvas depicts a young girl in a beautiful dress. The room is dark. The dress and her face are illuminated by the burning candle in the Venetian lantern she is holding. A Venetian lantern is a lampion made of coloured paper with a light source inside. The light shines through the paper, creating a special effect.

A print collector in 18th-century costume, painted in 1869 by Théodore Ceriez, sits in profile to the right at a table, studying a very ‘interesting’ print of a voluptuous naked lady in his hands, his pipe falling from his mouth in pieces onto the wooden floor in amazement.

Visual artist Eugeen Vansteenkiste (Wevelgem, 1896 – Ypres, 1963) died sixty years ago in Ypres, the city where he lived and worked. The Ypres Museum has a bunch of works by this eclectic artist. He painted allegorical scenes. His style is often called “romantic-visionary”. We recognise a lot of it, but there's always something weird. His paintings never stand alone, but are incorporated into custom-made frames. These are an integral part of the work.

Klootdolk (Dutch), ballock dagger (English), dague à couillettes (French) or testikeldolk (German). The names in various European languages leave little to the imagination. When you look at the piece, you immediately see why. The handle, with its two round bulbs, is reminiscent of male genitalia. Sometimes you also see it referred to as a kidney dagger. Here too, the origin of the name lies in its shape: the two spherical protrusions resemble two kidneys. However, this more prudish name only came into use in the 19th century. In the 14th and 15th centuries, people still referred to it cheerfully as the “klotendolk”.

September is traditionally an expensive month for many people. Holidays have been paid for, school is starting again, wardrobes need updating – in short, it's high time to start replenishing your savings account. Nowadays, this is mainly done digitally, but in the Middle Ages, people used earthenware money boxes.

The Ypres Museum has one of the largest collections of insignia. Insignia or pins were extremely popular in the Middle Ages. From the late 12th century onwards, insignia were widely distributed throughout the Western world as popular and inexpensive mass-produced items. There are hundreds of different types of insignia. They range from the sacred to the very profane or worldly, from purely devotional to extremely sexual, from religious to superstitious.