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Book Series
Pictura Nova, vol. 23
The Drawings of Peter Paul Rubens, A Critical Catalogue, Volume Two (1609–1620)
Part One: Text and Part Two: Images
Anne-Marie Logan, Kristin Lohse Belkin
- Pages:2 vols, 732 p.
- Size:216 x 280 mm
- Illustrations:291 col.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2023
- € 250,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-59953-3
- Hardback
- Available
Review(s)
“One can say straight away that the scholarly apparatus is impeccable. The books, with all works reproduced in color, are elegantly designed by Paul van Calster (…). One feature which makes the books particularly user friendly is the fact all comparative material is reproduced – paintings and sketches by Rubens, engravings after Rubens, and works of art by other artists that attracted Rubens’s attention, many in obscure locations and absent from earlier catalogues of Rubens’s drawings.” (Christopher White, in Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews, October 2023)
BIO
Anne-Marie Logan is a specialist in Rubens’s drawings and in those of his Flemish contemporaries, especially Van Dyck’s. She started her work on the present catalogue in 1972, collecting the vast amount of material that would go into a project of this scope. Her work resulted in two major exhibitions, Flemish Drawings in the Age of Rubens: Selected Works from American Collections, Wellesley College and Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993–94, and Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, with a previous showing at the Albertina, Vienna. In addition, Dr. Logan published catalogues of the drawings and watercolors in the Yale University Art Gallery (1970) and the Detroit Institute of Arts (1987) as well as numerous articles and book and exhibition reviews on Rubens and 17th-century Flemish drawings.
Kristin Lohse Belkin is a Rubens specialist who has carried out extensive research on the artist. She is the author of a book on Rubens published by Phaidon in their Art & Ideas series (1998) and has contributed to the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard (1980 and 2009). In 2000 and 2004, respectively, she co-curated two exhibitions at the Rubenshuis in Antwerp: Images of Death: Rubens copies Holbein (with Carl Depauw) and A House of Art Rubens as Collector (with Fiona Healy). In addition, Dr. Belkin has written articles and lectured widely on Rubens and Flemish art.
Summary
This is Volume II in the three-volume catalogue raisonné of the drawings by Rubens covering the years 1609–20. The project is a collaboration between Anne-Marie Logan, to whom belong all the Rubens attributions, and Kristin Lohse Belkin. It is the first publication that presents the artist’s entire drawn oeuvre in chronological order, previous such publications containing only selections of drawings. By leafing through the illustrations, this arrangement offers the user a quick visual impression of the variety of techniques, media, subject matter and functions of Rubens’s drawings at any one time. Accordingly, Volume II consists of the drawings from the time of Rubens’s return from Italy and the establishment of his workshop in Antwerp to the completion of his contribution to the furnishing and decoration of the city’s new Jesuit church, today’s St. Charles Borromeo. The decade is characterized by a broad range of genres and iconography: large altarpieces stand next to cabinet-size pictures, book illustrations next to designs for tapestry, sculpture and architectural reliefs; religious, mythological and historical subjects alternate with allegories, portraits, exotic hunts and scenes from country life. Copies after other artists’ works that constitute such a large part of Rubens’s early years discussed in Volume I have given way to original inventions in pen and ink and, above all, by life studies in chalk of the human body, naked or dressed. The whole spectrum of Rubens’s extraordinary creativity, nowhere presented as directly and immediately as in his drawings, is there to be contemplated in all its astonishing diversity.
Each entry consists of a detailed physical description of the drawing, provenance, exhibition history, full bibliography and a critical, interpretive discussion. All drawings by Rubens as well as a selection of comparative images are reproduced in color.
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