The story
Fritz Mayer van den Bergh was a wealthy young Antwerp collector with a sharp eye and not much time. In 1894 he bought, cheaply, a strange and violent panel almost nobody wanted: Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Dulle Griet, or Mad Meg, a giant woman in armor striding toward the mouth of Hell as the world burns behind her.
He died in 1901, only 43, and his mother built this museum to hold everything he had gathered, opening it in 1904 as a memorial to her son. It keeps the feel of a private collection, small rooms crowded with medieval sculpture, ivories, illuminated manuscripts and early Netherlandish painting.
Mad Meg is still the reason most people climb the stairs, along with Bruegel's Twelve Proverbs, twelve small roundels of everyday folly, both recognized by a man who saw them long before the rest of the market caught up.
