KIK-IRPA's news

The Holy Family, an authentic and rare work of Jacques Jordaens youth period, discovered in the town hall of Saint-Gilles (Brussels), unveiled in the museum after more than a year of restoration. The painting, which is more than 400 years old, has benefited from an extensive restoration campaign at IRPA, financed by urban.brussels, as part of its new competences in the field of movable heritage.

AGATO is an online decision support tool for heritage collection managers focused on properly preserving mixed-media historical objects. It guides the user in assessing the risks to which a collection item is exposed and provides recommendations to prevent future damage and improve conservation conditions.

The Grammont Breviary, a significant piece of Belgian heritage preserved in Maredsous, is now available online in three different languages on a special website. The Breviarium project is the result of a synergy between the Royal Institute of Cultural Heritage and the KU Leuven.

On Wednesday 7 September 2022, the painting "Virgin and Child surrounded by saints" by Pieter Paul Rubens was successfully transported to the Institute. An interdisciplinary conservation-restoration project will now begin at the Institute.

Our BALaT database offers more than 850,000 photos of Belgian cultural heritage free of charge. To better share our knowledge, various teams are tasked with collecting, preserving and digitising images from multiple supports. We met Sander Raes, digitisation expert in the DIGIT unit at KIK-IRPA.

Dankzij Closer to Van Eyck zoomden sinds 2012 miljoenen mensen in op de verbijsterend mooie details van een van de meest bejubelde kunstwerken ter wereld: het Lam Godsveelluik.

Two non-invasive chemical imaging modalities were employed to help understand the changes made over time to the Lamb of God, the focal point of the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. Two major results were obtained: a prediction of the facial features of the Lamb of God that had been hidden beneath nonoriginal overpaint dating from the 16th century (and later), and evidence for a smaller earlier version of the Lamb’s body with a more naturalistic build.