Sint-Jacobskerk

Late Gothic church where Rubens is buried — his last self-portrait hangs above his tomb

Address Lange Nieuwstraat 73

The late-Gothic church on Lange Nieuwstraat is best known as the place where Pieter Paul Rubens is buried. His tomb is in a chapel behind the high altar; above it hangs the painting Madonna and Saints which Rubens completed in 1634 — his only self-portrait in a religious work, with the painter cast as Saint George.

Construction began in 1491 and dragged on for more than a century, so the church combines late-Gothic structure with Renaissance and Baroque detail. The interior holds an unusual concentration of seventeenth-century funerary sculpture by the city's noble families. Open afternoons in summer, mornings in winter; admission charge. The walk from the Grote Markt takes about ten minutes.

things to do sight church
A story
Rubens chose Sint-Jacobskerk for his burial because his second wife, Helena Fourment, was a parishioner. He paid for the chapel of his tomb himself and commissioned the altarpiece — a Holy Family in which he portrayed himself as Saint George and his two wives as Mary Magdalene and Saint Martha.