by The women gather in a circle, talking intensely and unconsciously, their attention moving from one animated face to another as the conversation moves around the group. They seem completely unaware that from a window overlooking the courtyard where they are conversing, the artist Jacques Jordaens is sketching them in quick red chalk and brown ink.
It’s 1659, Antwerp, and, according to Jordaens’ scribbled note at the bottom of the paper, these so-called “gossip aunts” are discussing local political “disturbances” – perhaps the recent painters’ guild strike. “This is a glimpse into everyday life that you don’t normally see,” says An Van Camp, curator of Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
Many of these treasures are rarely shown, making this gathering a ‘once in a lifetime’ event.
Jordaens intimate portrait of everyday life highlights how drawings can do something very different from carefully composed paintings. It is just one highlight in an exhibition whose 120 masterpieces range from scribbles accompanied by fleeting bursts of imagination to drawings as finished works of art in their own right. Many of his treasures came from the list recently created by the Flemish government of the 100 most significant drawings in public and private hands, along with valuable works from the Ashmolean’s own collection. Because of their fragility, they are rarely exhibited, making this assemblage worthy of a “once in a lifetime” tag.
The exhibition brings you up close to the creative processes of those who were working at the height of Baroque art in the Spanish Netherlands during the Counter-Reformation. Antwerp’s favorite son, Rubens, is heavily emphasized. Among his drawings here are early works reinterpreting the Danse Macabre from a series of prints by Holbein. It was a subject that was banned by the Catholic Inquisition in Flanders because of the true Protestant view that everyone, whether a monk, a child or – by implication – a Pope, is equally holy. when they meet Death. The drawings show Rubens’ precious talent and the time he spent traveling in Germany. “It’s amazing that Rubens owned these illicit images,” says Van Camp.
Preliminary sketches for Rubens’ major works provide further insight, such as the charcoal study that became the central, fleshy, naked figure Christ raises on the cross in his 1610-11 altarpiece in Antwerp’s Cathedral. What he drew simply for his own sake later in life adds a very strong personal element: peaceful wooded landscapes were captured near the country castle where he made his home with his second wife.
Some of the drawings from the show were created as works of art in their own right, such as the artists’ “friendship sheets” given as gifts between peers and collaborators. “They are the ultimate independent drawing, selflessly done,” says Van Camp. “They allow you to sort out all the artistic networks and friendships.” Joris Hoefnagel’s exquisite 1593 drawing was created in gold ink for his cartographic friend Abraham Ortelius (his vividly illustrated map is another highlight). Athena’s wise owl appears throughout the globe, surrounded by flying insects, compasses and shells, and symbolizes their union of art and science.
No less memorable are the inferior works, such as Cornelis de Vos’s beautiful head of a gloomy, stoic-looking little girl, or the animals that could have filled the pages of the best, including an extraordinary life-size drawing careful of a. a dead worm. “I love the worm,” Van Camp enthuses. “Every work is a masterpiece.”
Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, until June 23.
Masters at work: six highlights from the show
Main image: Joris Hoefnagel – Allegory for Abraham Ortelius (1593)
“Friendship sheets” were works created not for monetary profit but as gifts exchanged between artists. As evidenced by this work such as the jewel given to his friend the mapmaker Ortelius, Hoefnagel was one of the few artists who excelled in “miniature” painting, rendering exquisite detail of flora and fauna.
Pieter Bruegel I – Temptation of St Anthony (1556)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s preparatory drawing for his famous print imagined a world turned upside down, filled with nightmarish half-human hybrid creatures, and vessels erupting around a giant screaming head.
Jacques Jordaens – Five Women Conversing (1659)
Jordaens could turn his expert hand to anything. He was a master of character sketches, creating head studies that would end his paintings. This work was not planned: he saw a moment from his window in Antwerp that he came down on paper in his vivid presence.
Maerten de Vos – Cadmus and Hermione: Design for the Decoration of the City of Antwerp (c 1594)
The exhibition includes sketches for temporary decorations for festivals now lost to time. This pen and ink drawing does not freeze a moment in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when the cursed couple Cadmus and Hermione are turned into dragon-headed snakes. The drawing was made in preparation for a festival welcoming the Catholic governor of the area in an era when the area was hit by a war between Catholics and Protestants.
Peter Paul Rubens – The Abbot and Death (1590)
Rubens was only 13 when he created this drawing based on Holbein’s Dance of Death series of prints. In Catholic Flanders, the idea that everyone would be equal before Death was a forbidden Protestant subject. Rubens’ series includes a knight, a judge and, in this image, an abbot being carried away by the skeleton-digger who gracefully wears the religious leader’s mitre.
Joannes Fijt – Study of a Dog (1630s)
This wonderful hound by the “animal” master Fijt shows the incredible skill of the painter to capture this animal in its canine life. This particular dog was a recurring Fijt model, possibly his pet.
