Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings.

2024. 244 pages with 190 illustrations: 180 colour & 10 black & white. Paperback 28x22cms. ISBN: 9781910807590. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in collaboration with the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, Rubenshuis and Christ Church Picture Gallery. Presenting over 100 drawings created by Flemish artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the three main essays each deal with one of the principal functions of drawings at the time: studies (copies and sketches), designs for other artworks (paintings, prints, tapestries, metalwork, stained glass, sculpture and architecture), and finally the independent drawings. Highlights will include a sketchbook in which a young Rubens has copied Holbein's Dance of Death woodcuts, intricate pen and ink drawings by Pieter Bruegel, miniatures by Joris Hoefnagel, portrait studies by Anthony van Dyck, and a rare survival of a friendship album containing numerous drawings and poems dedicated to its owner. Two recently discovered sheets by Rubens will also be included, a design for a book-illustration on optics and an anatomical study of three legs. Text in English.