"Rarely does one see any catalogue about Northern drawings from the sixteenth century, let alone one that illustrates works from across the Midwest of the United States. The very appearance of this catalogue, third volume in an ongoing series by the Midwest Art History Society, should excite not only curators but academics alike." (Freyda Spira, in: HNA Review of Books, July 2013)
Summary
This volume catalogues 137 drawings by nearly one hundred
artists active in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland,
and Spain from the very end of the fifteenth century through 1600.
Compiled by a team of twenty-two scholars, the book fully documents
each of the drawings from twenty-four museums, outside of Chicago,
with detailed scholarly entries and photographs of every work.
Taken as a group, the drawings in this book present some of the
most able draughtsmen of the period active north of the Alps. A
sampling of the artists include Albrecht Dürer and his
contemporaries in Germany, Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Beham, and
Georg Pencz; in the Lowlands, Jan Wellens de Cock, Maerten van
Heemskerck, Hendrick Goltzius, and Maerten de Vos; and from other
countries, members of the Dumonstier family in France and the Swiss
artists Tobias Stimmer and David Lindtmayer. The volume also
presents over forty drawings which are published here for the first
time with attributions to such artists as Christopher Amberger,
Wouter Pietersz. Crabeth, Virgil Solis, and Otto van Veen, among
others. In sum, the compilation of 73 Netherlandish drawings, 42
German works, and 22 sheets from other countries presents an
important cross-section of the brilliant evolution of the drawing
medium during the century. It is during this period that drawings
become truly of age, for both artists who view their creations as
works in themselves (as well as models for paintings and prints)
and now their public, who become fascinated with the collecting of
drawings as glimpses into the most personal and immediate artistic
thoughts of the skillful artists who made them.