This section of the Corpus Rubenianum is concerned with Rubens's remarkable study of Italian sixteenth-century art as shown through his numerous copies and adaptations. Rubens's study of the Cinquecento lasted throughout his life and was not just the focus of his early years in Antwerp when he learned his craft. At that time he used secondary copies as models for pen drawings or as a basis for enlarged painted adaptations such as his famous version in Dresden after Michelangelo's Leda. Rubens's most important full-size painted copies, however, were made as late as 1628-30 when he had travelled to Madrid and London and was in his fifties, a point when many artists would have thought they no longer needed to study. He may have made these copies because he could not buy the originals for his collection, but the act of creating such detailed visual records shows how attentive he was to the art of the past. This process culminated in his large and very free adaptations of the 1630s, now in Stockholm, after Titian's Andrians and Worship of Venus , which are among the most famous copies in the history of art. Rubens made relatively few drawings from paintings while in Italy between 1600 and 1608, although some survive after frescoes by Pordenone that he saw in Treviso and there are also a number that record Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Most of the catalogue entries, however, discuss the Italian copy drawings that Rubens bought during his travels and brought home to Antwerp. It will be argued that these sheets were taken out and retouched by him throughout his career. In total, this material amounts to one of the largest collections of graphic art assembled by a late Renaissance painter, and as a result it reveals Rubens's sophisticated and complex dialogue with Italian art.

Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artists: Italian Masters. Raphael and his School (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard)

Arts & Photography

Jeremy Wood

History & Criticism

Harvey Miller Publishers

This section of the Corpus Rubenianum is concerned with Rubens's remarkable study of past art as revealed by his numerous copies and adaptations from Italian sources. The material is so extensive that it has been divided into three separate volumes covering (I) Raphael and his School, (II) Titian and North Italian artists, and (III) artists who worked in Central Italy as well as in France. Rubens's study of the Cinquecento lasted throughout his life and was not just the focus of his early years in Antwerp when he learned his craft and often used prints and copy drawings as models. Perhaps surprisingly Rubens made relatively few drawings directly from paintings while in Italy between 1600 and 1608, although some survive after frescoes that he saw on his travels. Instead, Rubens was a rapacious collector of Italian drawings, both working studies and journeyman records. He kept them in his cabinet in Antwerp, and took them out from time to time to retouch and rework them so that they became his own. By this means he was able to return to the art of Italy long after he had left that country. Rubens most important painted copies were also made late in his career, in 1628-30 when he had travelled to Madrid and London and was in his fifties, a point when many artists would have thought they no longer needed to study. These replicas may have been made because he could not buy the originals for his collection, but they also reveal the thoroughness of his dialogue with Italian art. In total, this material amounts to the largest group of painted and drawn copies by any late Renaissance painter.

Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and later Artists: Italian artists. III. Artists working in central Italy and France(Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard Part XXVI) (Two Volume Set)

Brepols

One remarkable feature of European culture as it developed in the Renaissance was the accommodation it made with ancient paganism. The classical gods and their legends were allegorised, transformed into symbolic figures or emblematic scenes that might accord with Christian morality. At the same time a secular space was created in art for the depiction of the most popular myths, above all the love stories recounted by the ancient poets. These stories were not only attractive in themselves; they offered the opportunity to depict nude figures in narrative action, which the example of antiquity held forth as the highest goal for painting. Rubens was one of the greatest creators of classical allegory; he was also a supreme interpreter of the classical stories. No painter was so at home in the literature of the Greeks and Romans. When he painted for pleasure, which, increasingly in the course of his life, he felt able to do, he used pagan myth to express and celebrate themes of love, beauty and the creative forces of nature, often in wonderfully idiosyncratic ways. At the same time, as a Christian committed to the ideals of the Catholic Reformation, Rubens respected the restrictions generally placed on the depiction of pagan tales. Most of his mythological paintings were made for private settings, for display within houses (including his own) or in the galleries of princes, noblemen and prelates. It is happy accident of history that these splendid paintings are now widely visible in the great museums of the world.

Mythological Subjects: Hercules to Olympus (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, 11)

Gregory Martin

Fiona Healy

Elizabeth McGrath

Bert Schepers

Nils Büttner

Gerlinde Gruber

Eveliina Juntunen

Harvey Miller

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