Wiertz Museum

This guide to the Wiertz Museum in Brussels centers on Antoine Wiertz, a Belgian Romantic painter who believed he belonged beside Rubens and Michelangelo and painted on a scale to match, convincing the government to build this very studio hall in 1850 to hold his work. You'll hear about his fixation on the seconds after a beheading, a curiosity serious enough that he planned to hypnotize himself before attending a public execution, and about the critics, including the poet Baudelaire, who dismissed him as a poseur. Listen for how the theatrical lighting shows he staged in this hall once drew skeptical crowds anyway.