The Frans Hals Museum, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar and Teylers Museum will organize the first major retrospective exhibition on Maarten van Heemskerck. The Frans Hals Museum focuses on Heemskerck’s early career.
Maarten van Heemskerck was one of the most successful, innovative artists of the Northern Netherlands in the 16th century. In his lifetime, he saw the advent of Protestantism, new technology and the rise of the Dutch Republic. The changes that happened around him are reflected in his work: before it had been the Church, now burghers also patronised the arts, the impact of the Italian Renaissance reverberated in Holland and artists longed to see the art of Antiquity and their famous Italian contemporaries with their own eyes, while the iconoclastic cleansing of the churches brought a violent end to church art in the Northern Netherlands.
Saint Luke painting The Virgin (1532), Maerten van Heemskerck (Dutch, 1498 – 1574), 168x235cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.
In the Frans Hals Museum, the focus is on Maarten van Heemskerck’s early career. A comparison of his work with that of teachers and contemporaries such as Jan Gossaert and Jan van Scorel reveals how the up-and-coming, talented Heemskerck adopted and excelled in a remarkable new way of painting. This distinctly realistic style is clearly evident in the timeless portraits he painted for his increasingly successful burgher patrons. He depicted them with lifelike accuracy, down to the wrinkles and facial blemishes. Our exhibition concludes with his St Luke Painting the Virgin, the last work Heemskerck painted before leaving for Rome. It was one of the works Haarlem’s city council managed to save from the iconoclastic mob in 1566. A testimony to the high esteem in which Heemskerck was already held. St Luke Painting the Virgin has been restored specially for this exhibition and the spectacular result has revealed new insights into the way Heemskerck worked.
This year is the 450th anniversary of Maarten van Heemskerck’s death, then a wealthy, prominent burgher of Haarlem where he had settled after returning from Rome.
Du XIVe au XVIe siècle, l’Europe a été le théâtre d’une effervescence intellectuelle, artistique et scientifique nouvelle, que la postérité a consacrée sous le nom de Renaissance. L’humanisme en constitue le coeur : né dans l’Italie du XIVe siècle et caractérisé par le retour aux textes antiques et la restauration des valeurs de civilisation dont ils étaient porteurs, le mouvement humaniste a produit en Occident un modèle de culture nouveau, qui a modifié en profondeur les formes de la pensée comme celles de l’art. Les princes et les puissants s’en sont bientôt emparés pour fonder sur lui une image renouvelée d’eux-mêmes, comme l’attestent tout particulièrement les grandes et magnifiques bibliothèques qu’ils ont réunies.
La BnF consacre une exposition à cette épopée culturelle et à ce moment décisif dans l’avènement de notre modernité, où littérature et art occupent une place maîtresse. La présentation de plus de 200 oeuvres comprenant des manuscrits, des livres imprimés, des estampes, des dessins, des peintures, des sculptures et objets d’art, des monnaies et médailles issues des collections de la BnF et de prêts extérieurs de grandes collections parisiennes (musée du Louvre, musée Jacquemart-André) plonge le visiteur dans l’univers de pensée et le monde des humanistes de la Renaissance.
Le parcours de l’exposition conduit du cabinet de travail privé du lettré s’entourant de ses livres dans son studiolo jusqu’à l’espace ouvert au public des grandes bibliothèques princières. Entre ces deux moments qui disent l’importance capitale des livres et de leur collecte, le visiteur est invité à explorer les aspects majeurs de la culture humaniste de la Renaissance : le rôle fondateur joué au XIVe siècle par Pétrarque et sa bibliothèque ; la redécouverte des textes antiques et la tâche de leur diffusion par la copie manuscrite, le travail d’édition, la traduction ; l’évolution du goût et des formes artistiques qu’entraîne une connaissance toujours plus étendue du legs de l’Antiquité ; la promotion nouvelle de la dignité de l’être humain et des valeurs propres à sa puissance d’action et de création, telles que le programme humaniste de célébration des hommes illustres les exalte.
Tout au long du parcours, manuscrits magnifiquement calligraphiés et enluminés et livres imprimés à la mise en page et l’illustration renouvelées par des modèles empruntés à l’Antiquité sont replacés dans le dialogue que l’art du livre de la Renaissance ne cesse d’entretenir avec l’ensemble des arts plastiques et visuels du temps : peinture et sculpture, art de la médaille et de la reliure, gravure et dessin.
La culture des lettres promue par les humanistes est ainsi réunie au culte de la beauté par lequel ils entendaient créer les conditions propices à l’établissement d’un rapport neuf et toujours plus étroit avec la culture de l’Antiquité : un rapport qui ne faisait pas seulement de la civilisation antique une matière d’étude mais aussi l’objet d’une véritable « renaissance », qui n’envisageait pas seulement cette civilisation comme un monde de connaissances historiques mais aussi comme un monde de valeurs toujours actuelles, de manière à accomplir la promesse d’humanité contenue dans le mot même d’humanisme.
Une scénographie sobre, au service des oeuvres et de leur mise en relation, met à profit les volumes de la galerie Mansart de la BnF Richelieu, pour enchaîner dans l’unité d’un récit les cinq grands chapitres de l’exposition. Ils conduisent du XIVe au milieu du XVIe siècle, tout en suivant l’ordre thématique que leurs titres indiquent : « Le studiolo » ; « Pétrarque et la naissance de l’humanisme » ; « De l’étude de l’Antiquité au goût de l’antique » ; « Le savoir et la gloire » ; « De la bibliothèque humaniste à la bibliothèque princière ».
The “Kantharos from Stevensweert” is making its way back to Limburg! This Roman archaeological gem, crafted entirely from silver with golden embellishments, was discovered in 1943 in the Maas River in Stevensweert, Limburg. More info to follow.
The Ashmolean’s spring 2024 exhibition “Brueghel to Rubens, great Flemish drawings” will be devoted to some of the finest works of art produced by Flemish masters. Bruegel to Rubens will show 120 of the most outstanding drawings from the 16th and 17th centuries, with over 30 on display for the first time, including some which have only recently been discovered. Many of the drawings from Belgium are “Topstukken” – masterpieces designated by the Flemish Government for their exceptional quality and value.
The exhibition will show a remarkable range of artworks rarely seen in public because of their fragility and sensitivity to light. Among the works on show will be drawings by three of the most famous Flemish artists: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–69), Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641). The exhibition will also present numerous drawings by other talented draughtsmen, such as Maerten de Vos, Hans Bol, and Jacques Jordaens.
These drawings were produced during a period of great change and prosperity in the region known as the Southern Netherlands. This area was a hub of artistic production driven by high demand from the established rural aristocracy, newly monied urban patricians, and many religious orders and professional guilds. All were eager to commission sacred and secular paintings, sculpture and decorative artworks which required preparation in drawing.
This exhibition will be a first for grouping South Netherlandish drawings according to their function in the artist’s studio and beyond, presented in three galleries: as sketches and copies; as preparations for other works; and as independent works of art in their own right. In doing so, the exhibition provides an insight into how these artists honed their drawing skills throughout their careers.
The 120 works on display range from quick scribbles to elaborate studies: from sensitive portraits to compositional studies for paintings; colourful designs for triumphal arches and monumental tapestries; and elaborate sheets made to celebrate friendships. These will be shown together with a selection of related works for which the drawings were designs; and with artworks which inspired them. Overarching themes running across the exhibition include the personal connections and networks forged between these artists, often resulting in collaborations. Many of them travelled extensively, settled abroad and became court artists across Europe, emphasising the broader international achievements of South Netherlandish artists.
To begin with, the show considers studies, made in the studio or out of doors (en plein air), and includes copies of other artworks, such as antique sculpture. A highlight is an album containing tiny drawings by Rubens from around 1590, including his earliest work produced when he was aged just 13: ‘The Abbot and Death’, inspired by a Hans Holbein woodcut. Rubens makes the scene his own, enlivening the action and rendering the skeleton figures more dynamic. There will also be a reconstruction of Rubens’s drawing desk, featuring Ancient Roman busts and coins from the Ashmolean’s collections, similar to those the artist is known to have collected and copied.
The exhibition then explores design-drawings created in preparation for works in other media, including paintings, prints, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts, such as metalwork, stained glass and tapestries.
One of the most striking examples is Bruegel’s ‘The Temptation of St Anthony’ (c. 1556), a hellish vision of demonic creatures across a bleak landscape which recalls the work of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516). The drawing is meticulously rendered in pen and brown ink, intended to be made into an engraving by a professional printmaker. The Ashmolean has recently acquired an impression of the print, which will be on display for the first time in the exhibition.
Finally, the exhibition looks at drawings made as independent works of art, often for presentation or as gifts to patrons, friends and other artists. Among these are highly finished and painterly ‘cabinet miniatures,’ including a particularly fine example by Joris Hoefnagel – ‘An Arrangement of Flowers in a Vase with Insects’ (1594). This forms part of a display of sheets from ‘friendship albums’ with contributions from many South Netherlandish artists that would have circulated among friends and colleagues.
To celebrate the historic conservation work carried out on Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece – the first intervention of its kind since the painting entered the museum in 1800 – the Louvre has decided to dedicate a spotlight exhibition “A new look at Jan van Eyck, The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin” to the Chancellor Rolin in Prayer before the Virgin and Child. The layers of oxidised varnish that had darkened the paint were stripped away, restoring the work to its former glory. The Louvre wishes to show audiences how the analyses carried out at the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, and the conservation work itself, have challenged our previous assumptions about the piece, long known as the Virgin of Autun.
Many aspects of this painting – less well known than it should be for such a major work of Western art – may seem difficult to understand. For this reason, the exhibition will be built around a series of questions designed to draw the viewer in: for what purposes(s) did Van Eyck create this very unusual work for Nicolas Rolin? Why is the background landscape so miniaturised as to be almost invisible? How should we interpret the two small figures in the garden? What are the connections between this painting, the art of illumination and funerary bas-reliefs? Do we know how the artists of the 15th century interpreted the work? The Rolin Madonna illustrates the tensions between medieval tradition and revolutionary experimentation that pervaded Flemish art in the first third of the 15th century.
The Louvre’s investigation of the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin will be driven by comparison with other paintings by Van Eyck, as well as with works by Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin and the great illuminators of the time. Some sixty painted panels, manuscripts, drawings, bas-reliefs and precious metal artefacts will be brought together for this exhibition, made possible by the support of many museums and institutions in France and abroad, including the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (which is lending the Lucca Madonna for the first time), the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Royal Library in Brussels, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Mauritshuis exhibition “Roelant Savery’s Wondrous World“, featuring over 40 paintings and drawings, including works on loan from museums in the Netherlands and abroad, will introduce visitors to this highly versatile artist.
Roelant Savery was a pioneer in many fields, and introduced several new themes to Dutch painting. He made the Netherlands’ first floral still life, and was the most notable painter of the legendary (extinct) dodo. He was also the first artist who went out into the streets to draw ordinary people. His painted landscapes are often like a fairytale, featuring ancient ruins and marvellous vistas. And his animal paintings include so many species that it would be an understatement to describe them as ‘crowded’.
Roelant Savery was born in Kortrijk (Belgium) into a Protestant family. It was a tumultuous time, right in the midst of the Eighty Years’ War against Spain. When Roelant was six years old, the Savery family was forced to flee to Haarlem. A few years later, he became an apprentice to his ten-year-older brother Jaques in Amsterdam. The brothers worked together after Roelant completed his apprenticeship, until Jaques tragically passed away from the plague in 1603. Shortly thereafter, Roelant departed for Prague to work for the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II, who was the greatest collector of his time.
Roelant Savery spent over a decade in Prague, where he would develop into an incredibly versatile artist. He drew inspiration from the vast world around him and specialized in forest and mountain landscapes, animal studies, and floral still lifes. He depicted flora and fauna in intricate detail, including new species brought from all over the world to Europe.
For an artistic polymath like Roelant Savery, the court of Rudolf II was a paradise. The emperor collected not only art and scientific instruments but also plants and animals. In the gardens of Rudolf’s palace in Prague, Savery could personally study the wonders of nature. During the warm months of the year, the emperor sent him on expeditions to Tyrol to sketch the breathtaking landscapes. He marveled at the sights, including the Bohemian villages he visited
The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna’s 2024 spring exhibition “Holbein. Burgkmair. Dürer. Renaissance in the North” is devoted to three outstanding pioneers of the Renaissance north of the Alps: Hans Holbein the Elder, Hans Burgkmair, and Albrecht Dürer. It offers a golden opportunity to experience fascinating works by these artists and to explore how Augsburg became the birthplace of the Northern Renaissance.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Augsburg – dominated by the hugely wealthy banking family of the Fuggers – was influenced by the art of Italy more than almost any other city north of the Alps. That this was the case is vividly demonstrated by the two most important Augsburg painters of the period: Hans Holbein the Elder (c.1464–1524) and Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531). In the Vienna exhibition, select works by these two very contrasting artists enter into a stimulating dialogue with works by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and further German, Italian, and Netherlandish masters, notably the Augsburg-born Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543). The exhibition in Vienna showcases more than 160 paintings, sculptures and other works from many of the most important collections of Europe and the United States of America.
The upheavals in art around 1500 are brought to life and elucidated, as is the role of the imperial trading city of Augsburg as the centre of the Renaissance in the North.
The Rijksmuseum presents “Frans Hals“, an exhibition of some 50 of the Dutch master’s greatest paintings, many on loan from top international collections.
Frans Hals (Antwerp c.1583 – Haarlem 1666) is regarded as one of the most innovative artists of the 17th century, for his brisk, impressionistic painting style. With unparalleled boldness and talent, he captured the vitality of his subjects – from stately regents to cheerful musicians and children – and made them live and breathe on the canvas.
Frans Hals set himself the goal as a painter of capturing his subjects as the living, breathing, spirited people they were, in the most convincing manner possible. He achieved this by deliberately and courageously developing a unique style that was utterly original in Dutch 17th-century painting. Hals chose to use rapid brushwork to achieve an unprecedented sense of dynamism in his portraits. He is one of very few artists in the history of Western art to have successfully painted people smiling and laughing – most painters shied away from this challenge simply because it is so difficult. The subjects of Hals’s paintings come even more to life in this Rijksmuseum exhibition through explorations of their individual identities and social worlds. Malle Babbe, for example, must have been a familiar figure on the streets of Haarlem, and Pekelharing was probably an actor touring with a British theatre company.
Frans Hals’s original style and technique earned him a reputation in his own time as a virtuoso, a status equalled only by the likes of Rembrandt in the Netherlands and Velázquez in Spain. He was an in-demand portraitist among the wealthy citizenry of Haarlem and other cities in the region. Over the course of the 18th century, however, Hals’s work gradually fell into obscurity. It wasn’t until the 19th century that French art critic and journalist Théophile Thoré-Bürger (1807–1869) rediscovered his work, as well as that of Vermeer. Until the 1960s, Frans Hals was regarded as one of the ‘big three’ of 17th-century Dutch painting, alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer. Later, however, interest in the artist waned significantly – reason enough for the Rijksmuseum, The National Gallery, London, and Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, to place him on the highest possible pedestal and to show how truly boundary-breaking he was as an artist.
The artist’s expressive, gestural brushwork has always been seen as the most distinctive quality of his art, and he can justifiably be described as the forerunner of Impressionism. Hals’s virtuosic style influenced fellow artists Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, James McNeil Whistler, Claude Monet, Max Liebermann, Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and others. Almost all of them visited Haarlem to admire his portraits of individuals and civil militia groups.
Frans Hals is organised by the Rijksmuseum in partnership with the National Gallery, London, and Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Rubens owed his worldwide fame partly to the prints he commissioned from his paintings. These prints are masterpieces in their own right, transforming colour and form into black and white. In 1900, the renowned Rubens expert Max Rooses donated a collection of engravings and woodcuts to the KMSKA. Today, the museum owns more than 700 Rubens prints from before and after Rubens’ death. With this exhibition “Black on White, Rubens Graphics from the KMSKA Collection” the general public can also enjoy these masterpieces, presented in the intimate atmosphere of the print room.
Rubens’ fame spread quickly and far beyond Europe. He owed this to his paintings, but certainly also to the many prints he commissioned of his works. With these prints, the master succeeded in making his work known to a larger public and spreading new trends among artists, even abroad. In doing so, Rubens always recognised the importance of protecting the quality of his works on paper. Thus, he was one of the first artists to be granted a copyright (temporarily) from 1620 to protect his prints from imitation and looting.
The master had a distinct vision, selecting work or coming up with his own compositions to be converted into prints. In doing so, he had a great preference for copper engraving and woodcut. These printing techniques require great virtuosity on the part of the maker to properly convert the colours, volumes and nuances of a painting into black-and-white and all gradations in between. Unlike, say, Albrecht Dürer, Rubens therefore left the cutting of his prints to others. Their craftsmanship combined with Rubens’ artistic guidance resulted in prints of particularly high quality.
He worked with Lucas Vorsterman I (1596-1674), who managed to achieve subtle transitions and a wide variety of tones with a range of shading and stippling. After a quarrel with Vorsterman, Rubens called on his pupil Paulus Pontius (1603-1658), who matched his master’s style but was more controlled. And although the woodcut technique was somewhat outdated in the 17th century, Rubens, inspired by his great example Titian, whose works had been reproduced in woodcuts, also teamed up with Christopher Jegher (1596-1652).
Rubens checked the proofs himself, correcting them with pen or retouching them with paint. The engraver or woodcutter then refined the copper plate or woodblock further and further based on these intermediate states. Ruben’s engravings and woodcuts thus became masterpieces in their own right. Long after his death, Rubens’ compositions were still published in print. And even without his direct interference, the quality of these prints rose to great heights.
Around 1626, Rubens recognised the talent of the Frisian brothers Boëtius and Schelte Adamszoon Bolswert. Schelte in particular produced many of the graphic works named after Rubens after his death. He excelled in landscape scenes, a genre Rubens focused on in his later life.
This showcase exhibition “Storytelling. The Narrative Power of Printmaking” delves into the fascinating world of printmaking, which kicked off a groundbreaking transformation in the fifteenth century with its novel way of disseminating images. Before this time, works of art such as altarpieces and paintings were usually only accessible to a privileged audience. With the advent of the new media of woodcut and copperplate engraving, images could suddenly be produced and distributed quickly, cheaply, and in large editions. The exhibition impressively shows how printmaking, with its unique narrative form, helped to make images and the stories they contain accessible to a broad public for the first time. It also shows that, with the new medium, what was depicted also changed.
The Milkmaid (1510), Lucas van Leyden (Netherlandish, c.1494 – 1533), Engraving, 11x16cm), Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen. In a print that has been described as the earliest Dutch image of a milkmaid, a buxom lass and a strapping lad seem keenly aware of each other. The cowherd’s (and the viewer’s) focus on the farmgirl would have brought to mind the slang word melken (to milk), meaning to attract or lure. The term’s origin is more or less explained in an anonymous Dutch book of 1624, Nova poemata (subtitled “New Low German poems and riddles”), in which a woman in the act of milking a cow (“A sinewy thing she has seized with joy,” and so on) is compared with grabbing a man’s . . . attention. (Thanks to metropolitan Museum of Art, new York)
While the artists were initially still strongly influenced by religion and therefore also rendered mainly religious motifs, profane everyday scenes were now increasingly pushing their way into the center of the picture. But what purpose did these secular pictures serve? Which zeitgeist is reflected in them? And how did the artists manage to convey to the contemporary viewer not only an image, but at the same time an entire story or message on just a few square centimeters of paper? In contrast to the viewers of that time, who naturally understood the multilayered allusions conveyed through pictorial language, today we often lack this knowing gaze. “Storytelling” therefore invites us to decipher the hidden stories in the depictions and thus to (re)discover answers to the above-mentioned questions.
The Offer Of Love or The Ill-Assorted Couple (c.1495), Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471 – 1528), Engraving, 15x14cm, Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen. The theme of the unequal couple has been taken up as a moral satire from ancient times up to today. Due to the spread of prints, the motif gained great popularity north of the Alps in the last quarter of the 15th century. The depictions reflected the way of life of the class society and its order as well as the prevailing moral concepts. One of Albrecht Dürer’s first engravings shows the meeting of a young, well-off lady and an older gentleman at the edge of the forest outside the city. It quickly becomes clear that Dürer is not depicting a couple in love in his depiction: the gestures of the protagonists indicate that this is not true love, but rather a relationship for sale. The old man takes money out of his bag with his wrinkled hand and gives it to the young woman, who willingly accepts it. While the woman’s clothing, with a lavish bonnet and tight-fitting bodice, corresponds to the latest fashion, the depiction of the gentleman is ridiculed by the old-fashioned Tappert, his fur hat on the floor and his pointed shoes – and thus the old man’s madness in love. Dürer shows his iconographic ingenuity through further elements: the man’s bag with two small bags hangs directly in front of his lap, while the horse rubs itself sensually against a tree. The steeply upward broken branch to which the animal is tied is reminiscent of a phallic symbol. (Thanks to Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)
The exhibition presents a variety of artistically impressive and inventive prints, which to this day remain both aesthetically pleasing and, in terms of narrative, highly captivating. “Storytelling” provides a glimpse into late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century printmaking, while purposefully directing the eye to experience contemporary messages and artistic expression in a new way.
