{"id":17341,"date":"2020-12-16T15:35:38","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T13:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/wil-laan-brengt-romeinse-keizers-naar-belgica\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T15:05:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T13:05:59","slug":"wil-laan-brengt-romeinse-keizers-naar-belgica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wil-laan-brengt-romeinse-keizers-naar-belgica\/","title":{"rendered":"Wil van der Laan brings Roman emperors to the Via Belgica"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":{"categorie":null,"afbeelding":9076,"auteur":"Harry Lindelauf","fotografie":"Via Belgica","contentbuilder":[{"acf_fc_layout":"tekst","tekst":"Sculptor Wil van der Laan is working on a series of portrait heads of five renowned Roman emperors and an equestrian statue of Julius Caesar. The sculptures are cast in bronze at Art en Craft in Vroenhoven and will be presented in spring 2021. The artist hopes for a journey of his artworks to all municipalities in South Limburg along the Via Belgica."},{"acf_fc_layout":"tekst_foto","tekst":"The portraits depict Van der Laan\u2019s personal impression of the emperors. \u201cI did not feel like making copies of existing sculptures. I am of course guided by images from the past, but also by what I read about an emperor. It is difficult, but at the same time very challenging to create my own image from all the information.\u201d\r\n\r\nBronzi dei Dorati\r\n\r\nThe portrait series has a double origin: \u201cI often go to the museum Beelden aan Zee in Scheveningen. There you can find the portraits that Arthur Spronken made of the former royal family. I have never seen anything so beautiful. For example, the sculpture of Prince Claus. The sculpture shows resemblance but you also see in it that the man was struggling. Another inspiration came from Pergola (in the Marche, Italy). There I saw gilded bronze statues of horsemen from Roman times (Bronzi dei Dorati). Wonderful, so monumental.\u201d\r\n\r\n ","foto":9079},{"acf_fc_layout":"foto_tekst","foto":9082,"tekst":"Roman legionary\r\n\r\nBesides the exhibitions, a private commission formed the second impulse for Wil van der Laan. He was asked to make life-size bronze sculptures of a Roman legionary. \u201cI then began to immerse myself in Roman culture and read the stories about the emperors. All those impressions kept haunting my mind and I searched for a concept in which I could express all of it. I found that concept in the idea for this series of portrait heads.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u2018Look and shudder\u2019\r\n\r\nThe Roman series will soon include portraits of Augustus, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and of course Julius Caesar \u201cbecause it all begins with him.\u201d The term \u201cemperor\u201d is derived from Caesar.\r\n\r\nThe sculptures of Wil van der Laan, also known for his three-metre-tall Angel of Maastricht, are accompanied by texts by Dutch scholar Jan Coumans. With words he composes his vision of the emperors. Concerning emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius he writes, for example: \u201cThere was no wiser emperor. If only he had been wiser.\u201d And the text about Nero, emperor more than a hundred years before Marcus Aurelius, opens with a sentence of only three words: \u201cLook and shudder.\u201d\r\n\r\n "},{"acf_fc_layout":"tekst_foto","tekst":"On the Thermen\r\n\r\nWil van der Laan is cooperating in this project with foundry Art en Craft in Vroenhoven. \u201cWe share the costs, also to celebrate that we have been working together for thirty years.\u201d He thinks he will be able to present the complete series in March 2021 during pop-up exhibitions in all municipalities along the Via Belgica in South Limburg. For Maastricht he already has a concrete idea: his sculptures will soon be placed on the remains of the Roman Thermal Baths on the square of the same name between Stokstraat, Havenstraat and Plankstraat. Indeed, right in the Roman heart of Traiectum ad Mosam.","foto":9085}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17345,"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17341\/revisions\/17345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viabelgica.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}