Art in the Low Countries followed the trade, and the trade kept moving. In the fifteenth century it ran through Bruges, until the channel to the sea silted up and the merchants left. In the sixteenth it moved to Antwerp, the busiest port in Europe, until war closed the Scheldt in 1585 and thousands of craftsmen, printers and painters packed up and went north. In the seventeenth it settled in Amsterdam, which had become the warehouse of the world almost overnight.
Each move left a city behind with more churches, workshops and paintings than it would ever need again. Bruges never quite recovered, which is partly why it still looks the way it does.
The chapters that follow visit the cities where this art was made. Each one connects back to the movements in the first part of the book, and points to where the works can be found today. Paintings make more sense in the places that produced them. A morning in Delft brings Vermeer closer. An afternoon in Antwerp does the same for Rubens.

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