Until October 17 you can visit the exhibition ‘The workshop of Lucas Gassel’ in Helmond Castle. The exhibition is interesting for families and families with children from 8 years old.

The workshop

In Gassel’s time it was natural for an artist to produce his works with the help of a workshop. This could be small or large and consist of students, assistants and temporary workers. Nothing is known about the composition of Gassel’s workshop and what kind of paintings it produces. In the exhibition we not only show how people worked in Gassel’s time and with which materials, we also explain the life of Lucas Gassel. You can also see the beautiful work of Lucas that the museum has purchased, The Sacrifice of Abraham, which bears witness to the storytelling and painting talent of this sixteenth-century Helmond master.

Abraham’s sacrifice when it was restored by the Limburg Restoration Atelier Foundation in Maastricht.

Link with Helmond castle

What is Lucas’s link with ‘our’ castle? Lucas Gassel is known in the 16th century as “Lucas Gasselo Helmontano. Lucas van Gassel from Helmond. Yet he only lives there in his youth. His father worked there around 1500 as a painter. The family name Gassel (sometimes Van Gassel) occurs in Helmond around 1340. Helmond with its castle is then part of the Duchy of Brabant. The lords of Helmond have close contacts with the Brussels court, where the central government of Brabant and the Burgundian Netherlands is located. Lucas Gassel spends his last years in Brussels.