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Peter Paul Rubens as a Draftsman

This essay, written by Anne-Marie Logan and Michiel C. Plomp, was derived from the exhibition catalogue Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005).

Catalogue numbers (cat. nos.) refer to works of art in the exhibition catalogue. In this essay, links are provided for catalogue numbers that are illustrated and described in the online feature. Please use the back button on your browser to return to the essay.

Peter Paul Rubens was extremely careful with his drawings and kept them together all his life. There are even indications that he did not want other people to look at his drawings and designs.1 To a modern person this behavior may seem strange, but it really is not. For a seventeenth-century artist, drawings were indispensable in numerous ways, especially in a large studio. They were made for the creation of new paintings; collaborators used them to assist the master on these paintings; and they served as instructional material for pupils to copy. The drawings were guarded from the outside world because they were considered a kind of studio secret; the competition could well exploit designs for new compositions if they were released prematurely. How precious Rubens considered his drawings is evident from his testament, which stipulated that they should be passed on to any of his sons or sons-in-law who became a painter; only if it became clear, once all his children were grown, that none would become an artist or marry one could the drawings be dispersed.2 (Rubens did not provide for the possibility that one of his daughters might become an artist.) For all these reasons it is almost certain that Rubens would never have allowed his drawings to be shown in an exhibition like the present one. Drawings were private, strictly for the studio, strictly an element in his working process. To display his drawings publicly, so that everybody could see his searching, his sweat and toil, would probably have felt entirely inappropriate.

Since Rubens made drawings only for himself or for use in the studio, there was no reason to sign them. Whenever his name appears on a drawing, it is a later addition, most likely written by a collector. For modern connoisseurs who wish to get a proper picture of which drawings are by the master and which are not, this is, of course, a serious setback. Inscriptions, however, can be useful; their graphological evidence, combined with stylistic analysis, can establish a drawing's authenticity. The inscriptions on Rubens's drawings are usually personal remarks about what impressed him in the subject he has just recorded, or they are records of necessary information he might otherwise forget. For example, in the costume study Robin, The Dwarf of the Earl of Arundel (fig. 9), Rubens added notes on color, interspersed with brief descriptions of the garment. In some of his landscape studies Rubens not only jotted down observations on color, as in the close-up nature study Study of Blackthorn with Bramble and Other Plants (fig. 20), but also made note of optical phenomena, as in the late study Trees Reflected in Water at Sunset in London (cat. no. 104). Most of these inscriptions are written in Rubens's native tongue, Flemish. On occasion he used Latin. Italian was used for inscriptions meant to be read by others, such as the humanist Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc with whom Rubens was collaborating on a book project (cat. no. 24), or the stucco worker who was to execute a relief according to Rubens's design (cat. no. 52).

Given their private character, there was no need for Rubens to date his drawings, either. If we want to get an idea when certain drawings were made, we have to resort to circumstantial evidence, such as letters, contracts, dated paintings, or dated prints. It is, for example, thanks to a number of letters of 1620 between Rubens, the agent of Wolfgang Wilhelm, Duke of Neuburg, Count Palatine (1576–1653), and the duke himself that we can connect Rubens's drawing of the Birth of the Virgin, now in the Hart Collection (cat. no. 52), to a relief in the duke's church in Neuburg and deduce when the drawing was made.3 An association with paintings—the majority of Rubens's drawings are preparatory for paintings—is often helpful in finding the date for a drawing. Fortunately, many contracts or payment records for Rubens's more important commissions have survived and offer us a useful framework. Rubens signed the contract for the Raising of the Cross altarpiece now in Antwerp Cathedral in June 1610 and completed the painting within a year. This means that the individual figure studies for this work (cat. nos. 37, 38, and 39) likely date from the second half of 1610. The character of a drawing related to a painting is critical, however, for while Rubens usually worked on a detailed study of a specific figure while his painting was in progress, he sometimes made a drawing of an exploratory nature before the contract was signed. Drawings related to printmaking, a distinct category within Rubens's drawn oeuvre, can generally be dated without much of a problem. Title-page designs tend to date from shortly before the time the related books were published, and the same is true of preliminary drawings for dated engravings or etchings.

The absence of a signature and a date at times makes it difficult to form a proper idea of Rubens's drawn oeuvre or of his development as an artist. Moreover, Rubens used drawings for many purposes, and their variation in type, technique, and style is often disconcerting and bewildering. The drawings he made in preparation for paintings, for instance, are very different from those made in preparation for prints. But even within the category "drawings for paintings," there are huge discrepancies in style and technique. Rubens's dialogue on the page with his distinguished artistic predecessors yielded not only more or less straightforward copies but also drawings to which he gave a "face-lift," that is, old master drawings that he sometimes extensively retouched. Rubens's drawings can vary so widely that one sometimes wonders whether the same artist made them. But indeed he did, and often at almost the same time.

Types and Techniques

Rubens's Copies

Throughout his life Rubens made copies after other artists' work. He made them in the form of drawings, oil sketches, and paintings. The inventory of his estate drawn up after his death in 1640 listed no fewer than thirty-two painted copies after Titian (ca. 1487/90–1576) and nine after Raphael (1483–1520). Artists represented by one copy included Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Tintoretto (1518–1594), Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30–1569), and Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610). In all likelihood Rubens made these copies for himself; we know, however, that he also painted copies on commission, for instance, for the Gonzaga in Mantua and for Rudolf II in Prague. Today copying is frowned on. That was definitely not the case in Rubens's time, when copying was a basic practice in art education. Leonardo, for example, advised as early as 1490–92 that "the artist should first exercise his hand by copying . . . a good master."4 Copying was also the easiest way of acquiring a reproduction of another artist's work. Reproductions—in the seventeenth century, mostly copper engravings—were limited, sometimes expensive, not always very good, and often rendered in reverse from the original. For Rubens, who had so many interests in so many art forms, it was almost a necessity to make copies. Indeed, he continued copying throughout his life. Eventually all these copies added up to a rich collection of themes and motifs for future work.

The number of painted copies Rubens made was certainly impressive; the number of drawn copies, however, was many times higher. The earliest known works on paper by Rubens are also his earliest known drawn copies, after the forty-nine Dance of Death woodcuts designed by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) and published in 1562.5 Probably aged twelve or thirteen, Rubens faithfully recorded the woodcuts in their entirety, although he enlarged them slightly. It is interesting that the drawings, by such a young artist, are not slavish copies. Rubens sometimes added more volume to the figures, animated people's faces, and simplified backgrounds. The people generally express more fear than in Holbein's originals, and Death is often more vehement in his actions. In his copy after Holbein's Ploughman and Death Rubens even gave Death a more explicit guise: instead of glimpsing only the back of Death's head, as in the sixteenth-century woodcut (fig. 2), we see his gruesome profile (fig. 3). We will notice such changes, in which Rubens often reveals his own drawing style, more often in his later copies.

Fairly quickly, probably only one or two years later, Rubens became more selective and copied only what interested him in a composition rather than the entire scene. In a drawing in New York (cat. no. 1) he combined details—an image of Job's wife and another of Judith and Holofernes—copied from separate woodcuts in the so-called Stimmer Bible (1576). On a sheet of Four Studies of Female Nudes, today in the Louvre, Rubens copied three figures of Eve from three different woodcuts by Tobias Stimmer (1539–1584) and a fourth one from a woodcut by Jost Amman (1539–1591).6 On another sheet (cat. no. 2) Rubens assembled into a new scene figures copied from two engravings by Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617).

During his eight years in Italy (1600–1608), Rubens visited Rome twice, from late July 1601 to late January 1602 and from November 1605 to late October 1608. Copying played a big part in absorbing the art of classical antiquity. During his Roman sojourns the young Flemish artist drew (often more than once) the Laocoön group, the Belvedere Torso (cat. no. 34 verso), the Centaur Tormented by Cupid (cat. nos. 20, 21), the Dying Seneca (now known as the Borghese or African Fisherman; cat. nos. 22, 23), the Hercules Farnese, and the Farnese Bull.7 We have evidence that Rubens drew still more classical statues, for example, the Apollo Belvedere, a Seated Bacchus, the Hermes Belvedere, and Silenus Leaning against a Tree Trunk.8 The evidence comes from the so-called Rubens cantoor drawings, an assemblage of more than five hundred drawings after Rubens, largely made by his pupil Willem Panneels (ca. 1600–1634), who joined the Antwerp studio in the early 1620s and left in 1630. (The cantoor was the private room in Rubens's house where the artist kept his drawings, oil sketches, and other valuable objects.) Since the cantoor group, which is today in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, contains many copies after drawings by Rubens that are no longer known, it is obviously of great value, although artistically the sheets are not always of the highest quality.9 Combined with the original drawings, this large body of copies makes clear that Rubens's drawings constituted a veritable inventory of the famous ancient statuary to be found in Rome in the first decade of the seventeenth century.

In his intense involvement with classical antiquity Rubens followed the example of earlier Netherlandish artists such as Jan Gossaert (1478–1532), Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574), Lambert Lombard (1505–1566), Frans Floris (1520–1570), and Hendrick Goltzius, who had all traveled to Italy and recorded what impressed them in drawings. Although it is unlikely that Rubens saw any of Goltzius's drawings in Rome,10 a comparison of their copies is illuminating, since both focused on statues, apparently ignoring other types of antiquities. Each depicted a single sculpture on a single sheet, often drawing it from more than one angle and using black or red chalk. Goltzius, however, made his copies primarily with the intention of creating prints after them; therefore he drew with painstaking accuracy and from a clear viewpoint (the front or the back). He made sure to include the base of the statue, sometimes even adding passersby to give an idea of the scale. Rubens made his drawings solely for himself, however, in order to practice drawing, to have depictions of these outstanding works (to take home), and to study the anatomy of the sculpted figures. Thus Rubens's copies are not always very detailed, and sometimes they do not show the statue in its entirety. There was no need for him to depict the statue from the clearest vantage, and he produced unprecedented views of the ancient sculptures, such as his side views of Laocoön's torso now in Dresden and Milan.11

What is perhaps most interesting (and certainly uncharacteristic of his predecessors) is that in several cases Rubens appears deliberately to have avoided the impression that he was copying sculpture, leaving out the bases of statues, sometimes ignoring superficial damages, and even trying to disguise that the sculpted bodies were severely mutilated. By drawing the broken arms and legs imprecisely and leaving them vague, he sometimes suggested that the figure was not incomplete—the artist had simply decided not to draw it all (see, for example, the Centaur Tormented by Cupid in Moscow, cat. no. 21). This tampering recalls one of Rubens's well-known admonitions: "An artist must breathe life into those ancient works he depicts in his art, and if necessary 'adjust' the source to achieve the desired image."12 We see this tendency already in some of his drawings after the antique. In his Two Studies of a Boy in the British Museum, London,13 clearly based on the antique sculpture of the Spinario (Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome), one boy looks up toward the spectator as he would in real life. In his copy after the Belvedere Torso (cat. no. 34 verso) Rubens gave the mutilated statue a head and strings of hair. The use of red chalk in both these drawings was probably also deliberate, to simulate living flesh.

Rubens's use of red chalk in the aforementioned two drawings is an example of how the artist chose a medium appropriate to the object he copied. For his earlier copies after prints, Rubens had used pen and brown ink and brown wash, a technique that allowed him to capture the precise details of engravings and etchings. For his copies after the antique, chalk was ideal for the suggestion of soft flesh; it also did much to diminish "the effect of stone" that the artist loathed.14 In Italy Rubens continued using black and red chalk for his copies, usually reserving the red chalk, sometimes enhanced with brush and red ink, for naked body parts. As far as we know, only in his copies after Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone's colorful frescoes in the Chapel of the Annunciation in Treviso Cathedral was Rubens enticed to switch to watercolor (fig. 4).

Besides classical statues, Rubens carefully studied and copied the works of Italian Renaissance artists like Leonardo, Raphael, Giulio Romano (1499?–1546), and Michelangelo (1475–1564) during his years in Italy. A sketchbook that in all likelihood he used in Rome is said to have contained many "illustrations in pen after the best Masters, and principally after Raphael."15 Unfortunately, this book, the so-called Pocket Book, was destroyed in the eighteenth century. With regard to Michelangelo we are luckier: eight impressive copy drawings in black and red chalk after the prophets and sibyls painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling have survived (see cat. no. 4). Large and detailed, they are eloquent testimony to Rubens's enormous admiration for the great Italian artist. Rubens copied the prophets and sibyls accurately, but in a copy after one of the ignudi from the Sistine ceiling (fig. 11) Rubens considerably increased the musculature in the youth's body—as if he were enlivening an antique statue. On the whole, Rubens made few copies after Italian artists. Many, like the ones after Raphael, are probably lost. In addition, Rubens seems to have hired people to make copies for him.16

Shortly after Rubens returned to Antwerp at the end of 1608 he undertook another project that involved copying, recording fifteenth- and sixteenth-century portraits and costumes in the so-called Costume Book (see the "Sketchbooks" section below). A decade later, in 1622, Rubens collaborated on a project initiated by the French antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) and promised to provide drawings after antique gems and cameos in preparation for engravings to be published in book form. Although the project eventually was abandoned, Rubens produced at least nine careful drawings that faithfully reproduce antique gems, including the Antique Cameo with Claudius and Agrippina (cat. no. 24) and the drawing of the Gemma Tiberiana, in Antwerp.17 The last time we encounter Rubens as a copyist is during his visit in 1628–29 to Madrid, where he was said to have painted copies of all the Titians in the Spanish royal collections. On a drawing from that sojourn (cat. no. 7), Rubens recorded selectively in chalks on paper some of the heads in, and partial figures from, three of Titian's paintings, including the Diana and Callisto.

Compositional Drawings

"Please be advised that the final work will be very different from these drawings, which are lightly and quickly put on paper to give merely an idea, but later we will make the sketches [dissegni, probably oil sketches] and also the painting with all possible care and diligence." With these words inscribed on a drawing representing King David Playing the Harp (fig. 5),18 Rubens briefly explained how he approached a commission for a work of art. It is one of his rare statements about his working procedure. The inscribed drawing may have served as a reply to a patron who had inquired about commissioning a work with biblical scenes. Apparently nothing came of it.

Despite Rubens's words, King David Playing the Harp is far from a sketch dashed off on paper; it is, rather, a neat compositional drawing that seems to have been created after some deliberation. The artist's true initial compositional drawings, however, such as the Studies for the Visitation (fig. 6), really were rudimentary, quick ink sketches, mostly in mere outline. These early ideas were so hastily, almost chaotically, jotted down on paper that they were intelligible only to Rubens himself. He could not send them to patrons, but had to make a neater version, as he did with King David Playing the Harp. Relatively few of Rubens's first quick jottings have survived. As soon as the artist had arrived at the next stage in the preparation of the work (a clearer compositional drawing or an oil sketch), the prima idea could be discarded. Furthermore, drawings collectors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries usually had little regard for such quick sketches and therefore took no particular care to preserve them.

To begin a composition with rudimentary pen sketches is usually considered to be an Italian habit,19 one that Rubens might have learned during his eight-year stay in Italy. Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), the Italian painter, draftsman, writer, and collector, called such a sketch "a rough draft of the whole" ("una sola bozza del tutto").20 Rubens's teacher Otto van Veen (1556–1629), who himself spent several years in Italy, also seems to have used the rudimentary compositional sketch. Rubens therefore might have been introduced to the practice in Antwerp, even before he went to Italy. In seventeenth-century Flemish inventories such sketchy preliminary drawings are sometimes referred to as crabbelingen, "scribbles."21

Rubens's initial compositional drawings allow us a view into his creative process in general and into the "birth" of a number of particular works. We see how Rubens tries out certain possibilities by repeating figures or figural groups several times on the same sheet of paper, sometimes adjusting them slightly, sometimes dramatically. Given this process of searching, it comes as no surprise that some figures in Rubens's drawings seem to have more than two legs (see cat. no. 110) or multiple arms. Rubens did not hesitate to draw into or over a figure that he had already outlined. Some sections of an initial sketch can be clearly worked out, while others are barely indicated. Quick initial sketches, where one can follow the artist's mind and hand seemingly overflowing with ideas, include Three Sketches for Medea and Her Children (cat. no. 8 verso), David and Goliath (cat. no. 29 verso), Studies for Silenus and Aegle (cat. no. 31 recto), and Seventeen Studies of Dancing Peasants for a Kermis (cat. no. 103 recto). Prime examples of "neat" compositional drawings are the two studies of the Continence of Scipio, one in Berlin (cat. no. 33) and the other in Bayonne (fig. 75).22

For both his hasty and his finished compositional drawings Rubens used pen and ink, preferably the traditional brown or reddish brown bistre ink, which was made from oven soot. Compositional drawings executed in chalk are rare in Rubens's oeuvre. He used chalk in Italy for the Baptism of Christ of about 1604 (cat. no. 14) and the Study for the Circumcision of early 1605 (cat. no. 17). The former is carefully drawn in black chalk only; the latter, showing more forceful, freer strokes, is drawn in black and some red chalk. Squared for transfer, both drawings resulted in large altar paintings. To judge from surviving examples, Rubens employed chalk for compositional drawings even less frequently after his return to Flanders in 1608. In the 1620s he utilized black chalk in the two known compositional drawings for the ceiling decoration of the Jesuit church (today Saint Charles Borromeo) in Antwerp: Saint Gregory Nazianzenus (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge) and Saint Athanasius (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg).23 In the mid-1630s he executed Hercules Strangling the Nemean Lion (cat. no. 110) in black and red chalk. Rubens probably found chalk's softness and lack of clarity to be drawbacks in his compositional drawings. "Scribbles" in ink were better suited to quickly jotting down ideas.

From the 1620s, Rubens's urge to prepare a painting with one or more preliminary drawings seemed to diminish. This is especially evident in his large cycles of paintings dedicated to episodes from the lives of the Roman consul Decius Mus, the emperor Constantine the Great, Marie de Médicis of France, and Achilles. For all four series, just two double-sided compositional drawings are known, both of them for the Medici cycle (one of them, The Majority of Louis XIII, is now in the Louvre, Paris).24 In preparation for these large cycles Rubens created oil sketches for each painting, sometimes two for one subject: an initial one in shades of brown, called a bozzetto, and a second, more elaborate one in color, called a modello. In these cases Rubens's working method did not really change, however: he switched from a compositional drawing to a painted bozzetto to fix his early ideas, but the colored oil sketch was still "step two" in the process. Indeed, at that time the distinction between a drawing and an oil sketch was not that clear. In the Flemish of the day, teekening could mean "drawing" as well as "oil sketch."25

Drawings from the Model

Once Rubens had thought out the composition of a certain work through his crabbelingen or compositional drawings and had put it down properly in an oil sketch, his next step was to make individual studies in black chalk of the most important figures in the work. For that purpose Rubens must have had at his disposal models whom he could ask to pose in the position already basically established in the oil sketch. In these drawings the artist refined the pose of the figure and studied and improved such details as facial expression, the musculature of a naked figure, or the intricate folds of a garment. It was not always necessary for Rubens to draw the entire figure; sometimes the upper body, clasped hands, or an outstretched arm was enough. He apparently used only male models, even when, as in his Female Nude: Study for Psyche (cat. no. 36), the figure studied was a woman.26 In his oil sketches Rubens calculated the general lighting, but he determined the exact shading in the drawings after life.

Comparing a figure from one of Rubens's oil sketches with the drawing from the model that followed makes plain the function of these studies and the significant changes they sometimes brought about. In his oil sketch for the large altarpiece of the Miracles of Saint Francis Xavier, Rubens depicted a shortsighted, unpleasant old man groping his way forward with a staff in his right hand (fig. 109). In his drawing after a model for this particular figure (cat. no. 64), Rubens introduced only a few changes—which made a world of difference. A change in age—in the drawing the man is much younger—makes the figure more sympathetic. More important, in the drawing (and in the final painting) the man's groping arms are no longer widespread but straight and held close together, an easily read indication that the man is not shortsighted but blind. This circumstance now includes him among the sick gathered before Saint Francis Xavier and amplifies the saint's miraculous healing power. Thus the alterations made in Rubens's drawing from the model enhance the message of the painting.

Rubens preferred black chalk, at times heightened with white chalk, for his drawings after the model. Chalk allowed for fine, soft gradations in modeling. Red chalk is rare and found only in the 1630s, for example, in the Study of a Seated Woman, Turned to the Right (cat. no. 109); this study, however, is associated with a painting by Rubens of his second wife, Helena Fourment, and may be a special case. For the most part Rubens used off-white paper; no drawings by him on colored paper are known. Although in general Rubens used large sheets of paper, he often ran out of room for the figure. Thus, as in his Kneeling Male Nude Seen from Behind (cat. no. 35) and Study for the Figure of Christ (cat. no. 37), he inserted hands, parts of the lower leg, or feet in separate sketches alongside the main figure.

Rubens's drawings after the model made in preparation for a painting should be distinguished from a drawing type that looks comparable but is not the same: the "academy" or academy study. In order to learn how to draw, and also to maintain the skill, (young) artists drew after the posed model, probably from the sixteenth century on. Since this teaching method was generally practiced at an academy—one privately organized in an artist's studio or a public institution established by the authorities—the studies produced became known colloquially as "academies." The "academies," however, were not drawn with a specific artwork in mind, as in Rubens's case; they were for study purposes only. Whether Rubens ever made academy studies is unknown. We do have a report, however, that at about age forty—the report dates from 1618—Rubens declared drawing from the model as taught in the academy to be of "little or noe purpose."27

Rubens was hardly the first to make drawings after the model for a specific goal, however. In Italy this practice was already well established—Raphael and Michelangelo had made large numbers of figure studies in preparation for their paintings—and it was also in Italy that Rubens started making such studies. Two such sheets from his Italian years are known: Two Men Holding the Shaft of the Cross (fig. 16), which he drew for his Raising of the Cross altarpiece for the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome (1601–2; destroyed), and Man Holding a Staff (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome), a likely preliminary study for the Adoration of the Shepherds for the church of the Oratorians in Fermo (1608; Museo Civico, Fermo).28

Annibale Carracci (1560–1609)—one of the few contemporary Italian artists that Rubens seemed to have highly respected—may have served as Rubens's example in this matter. The Bolognese artist, together with his brother, Agostino (1557–1602), and his cousin Ludovico (1555–1619), greatly enhanced the role of drawing in the pursuit of a more naturalistic rendering of the subject, especially of the human figure. The Carracci stressed the study of nature and hence accorded much importance to drawing from life, and not only from the posed model.29 Shortly before Rubens's first stay in Rome (1601–2), Annibale Carracci finished the decoration of the ceiling of the Palazzo Farnese's gallery. Rubens doubtless saw and admired this wonder of modern Rome. As it is almost certain that Rubens and Annibale met in Rome, one may surmise that Rubens saw some of the six hundred or so preliminary drawings Annibale had made for the ceiling decoration. The strongest argument for Annibale's influence, however, may be the close technical and stylistic resemblance of Annibale's and Rubens's black-chalk drawings after the model.30

After his return to Antwerp in 1608, Rubens further explored the possibilities of drawings after the model. They were an important stage in getting the figures in his paintings exactly as he wanted them, and they were essential as time-saving devices. From the 1610s Rubens was extremely popular and continuously received commissions for new work. To satisfy this great demand Rubens took on many pupils and assistants. A description of Rubens's studio in 1621 by Otto Sperling (1602–1673), the physician to the Danish court, makes clear that many paintings at that time were collaborations. In one room Sperling saw "many young painters who worked on different pieces on which Sr. Rubens had drawn with chalk and put a spot of color here and there; the young men had to execute these paintings which then were finished off with lines and colors added by Rubens himself."31 Indeed, recent infrared reflectography shows that there are initial chalk drawings of the sort Sperling described on the ground layer of the prepared panel of Rubens's Antwerp altarpiece of the Raising of the Cross (see figs. 7 and 8).32 However, as these rudimentary sketches only outline the figures, it is inconceivable that they were adequate for the aspiring artists in Rubens's studio to continue their work. They must have needed more guidance, and it is generally assumed that the master provided this through drawings after the model.

There are telling differences between the initial rough sketch of the crouching man seen from the back who is trying to hold up the Cross, visible through infrared reflectography (fig. 8), and the drawing after the model for the same figure (cat. no. 38). Rubens outlined the figure on the central panel of the Raising of the Cross triptych only to place it within the composition; the extended left arm is visible, and a few additional chalk (?) strokes indicate the loincloth. There are no demarcations of the muscles on the man's back and arms. The anatomical details that the assistants were to follow were supplied, instead, by Rubens's drawing after the model. That he supervised his assistants is evident from the final touches he made to the figure: he bent the man's right arm more, making the muscles around his shoulder bulge; he lowered the figure's left arm slightly and turned it just enough that his hand could grip the side of the Cross; and he made the loincloth bulkier (fig. 7).

Drawings from the model are most numerous in the 1610s, when Rubens had his large studio. They grew rarer as Rubens—and some of his assistants—became more experienced. The artist resumed drawing from the model in the 1630s, in his many large chalk studies for the Garden of Love painting of about 1632–33 (see cat. nos. 90, 91, and 92).

Drawings for Portraits

Rubens apparently was a reluctant portrait painter. Early on, during his service to Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, he wrote that he would make portraits only if this work led to "greater things."33 Nevertheless, Rubens painted a number of portraits during his employment by the duke. These include the Duke of Lerma on Horseback (fig. 48), the Mantuan Friendship Portrait (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne), Vincenzo Gonzaga and His Family Adoring the Holy Trinity (fig. 51), and several portraits of Genoese aristocrats. A few preparatory drawings for these portraits and some related sheets have survived. We have the modello for the equestrian portrait of Lerma, executed in great detail in pen and wash over traces of black chalk (cat. no. 13), as well as the rather precisely drawn portraits in black and red chalk of Francesco Gonzaga (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) and Ferdinando Gonzaga (fig. 17), a portrait of an unknown bearded man (Albertina, Vienna), and the study for a portrait of Jan Woverius (cat. no. 11). Like his compositional drawings created in Italy, these portrait drawings show great variety, especially in technique but also in style, suggesting that the young artist was still searching for the best method of preparing them.

After returning to Antwerp from Italy in 1608, Rubens was able to avoid official portraiture for some time. From the 1620s, when his career as a diplomat took flight and he was often visiting foreign courts, the demand for painted portraits—which he, in his function as painter-diplomat, could not refuse—began to rise. Indeed, we have a firsthand report from 1620 about a portrait session with Rubens. Aletheia Talbot, the wife of the Earl of Arundel, passed through Antwerp in the summer of that year with her marshal, jester, dwarf, and large greyhound. Francesco Vercellini, one of the earl's secretaries, who traveled with Aletheia, wrote in a letter to Arundel: "It was arranged that her Excellency, my Lady should come the following day to sit, which she did; and he [Rubens], full of courtesy, completed her portrait, with Robin the dwarf, the fool, and the dog. A few small details that are yet lacking he will furnish tomorrow. . . . As the said Signor Ribins [Rubens] had not at hand a sufficiently large canvas he painted [or drew; ha ritratto] the heads as they are to be; drew on paper the postures and the dress; and took the whole portrait of the dog. So it will remain while he is arranging the canvas, when, with his own hand, he will copy what he has done."34 This canvas is today in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. It shows Aletheia Talbot sitting on a terrace and caressing her large dog, with Robin the dwarf at her right with a falcon on his right arm and the jester at her left.35

The conditions described by Vercellini may have been exceptional, owing to Rubens's lack of a proper canvas. Enough preparatory drawings by Rubens survive, however, to support Vercellini's account of the artist's use of two distinct types of preliminary drawings for portraits: studies of the sitter's pose and costume (and on occasion, the setting)—such as the drawing Robin, the Dwarf of the Earl of Arundel (fig. 9),36 preserved from Aletheia Talbot's 1620 sitting—and studies of the head. Rubens had already explored both types of drawings in Italy. However, an elaborate, painstakingly executed sheet like the 1603 study for Lerma's portrait (cat. no. 13) was out of the question in the 1620s, when Rubens was so busy. Indeed, in a drawing of 1629–30 for a portrait of the English collector Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel (cat. no. 80), a helmet on a table and a curtain are only vaguely indicated behind the figure of the earl, outfitted in armor. Another preliminary drawing for Arundel's portrait, also from 1629–30 (cat. no. 79), is a head study. In his head studies of the later 1620s and early 1630s, such as his study of about 1631 for a portrait of Helena Fourment (cat. no. 88), Rubens refined his use of black, red, and white chalks. (This trois crayons, or three chalks, technique became very popular in France in the eighteenth century among artists like Antoine Watteau [1684–1721] and François Boucher [1703–1770], who may have been influenced by Rubens's drawings.)

The portrait drawings that Rubens made of members of his family—his two wives, his children, and other close relatives (cat. nos. 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, and 88)—seem to have been created as private studies, probably meant largely for the artist's own enjoyment. Only occasionally were these personal documents translated into oil. A portrait drawing of about 1621 of Rubens's first wife, Isabella Brant (cat. no. 82), was used for a painting of about the same time (fig. 128)—not by Rubens, however, but by his pupil Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). It has been suggested that Van Dyck gave the painting, which shows Isabella in front of the family's Antwerp home, to Rubens as a gift. (Whatever Van Dyck's motivation, the incident shows that he had access to at least some of Rubens's private drawings.) Rubens based his well-known full-length portrait of his sons Albert and Nicolaas, now in the Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna (fig. 132),37 on head studies of his sons, one now in the Albertina (cat. no. 86), the other lost and known only through a copy. He also seems to have utilized portraits of Albert and Nicolaas as infants for depictions of the Christ Child (see cat. nos. 59, 81).

Rubens's highly finished study of about 1630–32 of Helena Fourment (fig. 10)38 is the most extraordinary and celebrated drawing among the artist's portraits of his family members. It is also by far his largest portrait drawing. Holding a small prayer book in one hand and moving her mantle (attached to a cap with a large pom-pom) over her shoulder with the other, Helena is captured just as she is leaving for, or returning from, church. Her sumptuous clothing resembles the fashionable attire of the young women in Rubens's Garden of Love painting (see cat. nos. 90, 91, and 92). Rubens may have made an initial brief sketch of Helena before creating this elaborate portrait, which in turn may have inspired his late canvas Helena Fourment and Frans Rubens, today in the Louvre, Paris.39

Drawings for Prints

Rubens's involvement in printmaking began in earnest when he was about thirty. Unlike Rembrandt (1606–1669), his counterpart in the Northern Netherlands, or Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664) in Italy, or Jacques Callot (1592–1635) in France—to name the three most prominent seventeenth-century printmakers in Europe—Rubens hardly touched the etching needle or the engraving burin.40 Nevertheless, his participation in printmaking set new standards, especially for book illustrations and the reproductive print. He also helped to resurrect the woodcut technique and to bring it to new heights.

Rubens was one of the rare major artists who engaged in designing title pages and book illustrations (cat. nos. 49, 50, 51). Given that Antwerp at that time was one of the most active printing centers in Europe and profited handsomely from the export of books, maps, pamphlets, and almanacs, his involvement is not difficult to understand. Rubens was also a learned man—a pictor doctus, as his contemporaries sometimes called him—who was interested in books and had a large library. Finally, he had been a close friend, since Latin school, of Balthasar Moretus (1574–1641), the most important member of the distinguished Plantin Press in Antwerp. Rubens and Moretus collaborated for thirty years.

Rubens's first experience preparing drawings for publication was during his second visit to Rome (1605–8), when he furnished five designs after Roman statues and architectural fragments (all now lost) for engravings to illustrate his brother Philip's book Philippo Rvbenii Electorum Libri II (Two Books of Selections by Philip Rubens);41 this book on ancient customs and costumes was published by Jan Moretus (1543–1610), Balthasar's father, at the Plantin Press in 1608. The engravings after Rubens's drawings were by Cornelis Galle the Elder (1576–1650), who was then living in Rome and knew the Rubens brothers.

Rubens created more than forty title pages for books published by the Plantin Press between 1609 and 1645 and in 1666. Twenty of them were for publications dealing with theology and church history.42 In his title-page designs he maintained the layout in general use during the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, in which architectural details were combined with tomb sculpture, forming a so-called sepulchral altar.43 However, he increased the size and volume of the figures, reduced their number, and depicted them in a livelier manner. At times he eliminated the framing architecture altogether, substituting an open space with landscapes. In contrast to his predecessors, he also tried to relate his title page to the content of the book. Rubens found inspiration for his designs in written sources about the gods and religious customs of the ancients. His proficiency in Latin, the language of the majority of his sources, was invaluable.

Rubens's collaboration with Balthasar Moretus, who took over the Plantin Press in 1610, began about 1612 with drawings for two new illustrations for an edition of the Missale Romanum (Roman Missal) published in 1613. One of them, the Adoration of the Magi (cat. no. 49), was reused for the press's 1614 edition of the Breviarium Romanum (Roman Breviary), with additional illustrations after Rubens's drawings, including the All Saints (cat. no. 50). For Rubens, working on book illustrations and title pages seems to have been a form of relaxation, a fun job that tested his knowledge and that he performed on Sundays or holidays. In a letter of September 13, 1630, to Balthasar Cordier (1592–1650), a Jesuit born in Antwerp and living in Vienna who was inquiring about commissioning a drawing from Rubens, Balthasar Moretus explained that he usually gave the artist six months to reflect upon a title page and execute it at his leisure, and only on holidays, as he did not do this kind of work on regular workdays; otherwise, he would demand one hundred florins for a single design.44 Rubens was paid according to the size of the drawing, and the sums were relatively small: twenty florins for a folio page, twelve for one in quarto, eight for one in octavo, and five for even smaller ones. (The artist often waived his payment and accepted books in exchange.)45

Rubens drew his preliminary designs for title pages and book illustrations in a fine pen and added light washes to indicate light and dark areas. There is often little or no visible underdrawing in black chalk. Short pen strokes to indicate the modeling were made in parallel lines only, to allow the engraver more freedom to add cross-hatching with the burin. If the book's author approved of Rubens's design, the drawing and the copperplate for the engraving were usually sent to Cornelis Galle the Elder, the preferred engraver of Rubens and Moretus. Once the copperplate was engraved, proof impressions of the print were taken and sent to the publisher and to Rubens. If needed, the artist would make corrections with a fine pen and brown ink.46 These were usually minor and included additional strands of hair or slight alterations in a figure's face or extremities. Rubens used brush and grayish body color to lighten or delete areas. These designs for title pages and book illustrations can be dated rather precisely since—until the late 1630s—Rubens prepared them shortly before their publication; at least five designs, however, were not published until after Rubens's death in 1640.

We can only guess why Rubens began the enterprise of having prints made after his paintings. He was familiar with the engravings Marcantonio Raimondi (ca. 1480–ca. 1527) had produced after Raphael's paintings and those Cornelis Cort (1533–1578) engraved after Titian's; he may simply have decided to do likewise. He may also have wished to use prints to satisfy the immense demand for his paintings, which he was unable to meet in spite of his large and well-organized workshop. In a 1635 letter to his friend Peiresc, Rubens said that through the prints he hoped to gain honor rather than any financial benefit.47 However, we may wonder whether this was really the case and whether Rubens did not in fact receive a percentage of the profit from sales of the prints.

In preparation for the prints, assistants in Rubens's studio (not necessarily the engravers) produced careful, large drawings after the artist's paintings. These designs were all begun in black chalk and gone over in part with pen and brown ink; on some we find additional work in brush and gray and brown wash heightened with white. Rubens carefully supervised their making, sometimes adding corrections (see below). Today the draftsmen remain largely anonymous; their primary task was to copy the paintings carefully, avoiding any intrusion of personal style. However, the art theorist Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613–1696) tells us that Anthony van Dyck was one of them.48 On the basis of this statement and stylistic comparison, several sheets preparatory for engravings after Rubens have been attributed to him: Lot and His Family Leaving Sodom, Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, and the Adoration of the Shepherds, all now in the Louvre, Paris.49 There are many more drawings for reproductive engravings preserved in the Louvre, the majority of them once owned by Everhard Jabach (1618–1695), one of the early collectors of Rubens's drawings. It therefore seems likely that these drawings have remained together from the time they left Rubens's studio, where the artist probably kept them as a group.

When the assistant had finished the drawing, Rubens would go over it, making changes with pen and brush and brown ink. With the pen he would place accents in faces, hair, arms, and legs; the different layers added with the brush were to introduce shadow. Sometimes Rubens made major alterations in the preliminary design for the engraving, as one can see in the drawings of Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus (cat. no. 55) and the Feast of Herod (cat. no. 57). An intervention by Rubens in the Assumption of the Virgin drawing of about 1624 (cat. no. 53) changed the subject from a conventional Assumption scene into one in which Christ welcomes his mother into heaven. In general, however, such rigorous reworkings are the exception.

Interventions large and small in the preparatory drawings are a clear indication of the seriousness with which Rubens approached putting his paintings into print. He also watched closely over the production of the engravings. Meticulous corrections are found on proofs of his prints. Indeed, Rubens seemed to have been highly demanding. In the case of the engraver Lucas Vorsterman (1596–1675), the artist was perhaps too much so. Their collaboration ended abruptly in 1622 (and was resumed only briefly in the late 1630s), when, it seems, Rubens and Vorsterman were at loggerheads over a particularly complicated design.

Between 1633 and 1635, during the last decade of his life, Rubens became involved in the production of woodcuts. In the early 1630s the highly skilled Christoffel Jegher (1596–1652/53) was creating woodcuts for the Plantin Press in Antwerp, which may have caught Rubens's interest. Rubens and Jegher together prepared drawings for woodcuts after the Garden of Love (cat. nos. 93, 94) and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (cat. no. 95), and in so doing they modified the compositions of the original paintings. Jegher's woodcuts after the two exceptionally large drawings based on the Garden of Love mark the high point in this endeavor.

Drawings Retouched by Rubens

Artists were among the very first to collect old master drawings, probably starting in the fifteenth century in Italy; they did it to learn and to enjoy. Soon this activity spread to the North. Famous early artist-collectors included Giorgio Vasari, Ludovico, Agostino, and Annibale Carracci, and Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529–1592) in Italy, and Lucas de Heere (1534–1584), Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1601), and Cornelis van Haarlem (1562–1638) in the Netherlands. Rubens joined right in. He may have started collecting drawings in Italy because of his great admiration for Italian art. The drawings he collected there were also a wonderful remembrance of his years in the South.

Old master drawings nowadays are considered untouchable, almost holy. This was not the case in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Vasari, for instance, usually cut the drawings he owned to what he considered the proper format and pasted them on mounts—sometimes in configurations of several sheets—on which he drew elaborate frames. Cornelis Dusart (1660–1704) heavily reworked the drawings he inherited from his teacher Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), probably in order to make them more salable. The collector Everhard Jabach hired an artist to work on several drawings in his collection that he considered unfinished. (Only recently has scholarly attention been paid to this phenomenon.)50 Many of these "finishing-up" activities were later concealed, especially from the nineteenth century on, when drawings came to be seen as an artist's most intimate, private expressions. The retouches Rubens added to drawings, however, have always been acknowledged and generally admired.51 This may have been owing to the large number of drawings he retouched, and probably also to his fame.

More than two hundred drawings retouched by Rubens are known. The majority are drawings by sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Italian artists.52 About forty of them are by or after Giulio Romano; some twenty reflect compositions by Raphael; eighteen are after Polidoro da Caravaggio (1490/1500–?1543). Rubens also retouched drawings by Northern artists, but those are less numerous. One especially instructive example is the drawing of a Hawking Party by Bernaert van Orley (ca. 1488–1541) or a member of his workshop, today in the British Museum, London.53 Rubens doubled the dimensions of the small Van Orley drawing, which is only a fragment of a larger sheet, by enlarging it on two sides. With black chalk and brush and dark brown ink and wash Rubens superbly "restored" the cut-off limbs of the hunters and their horses and carried his retouches into the sixteenth-century drawing, thus integrating the old with the new.

Rubens's interventions, however, were not always this drastic. Usually they consisted of light retouchings in media similar to those of the underlying original drawings. For instance, on drawings in red chalk he preferred to work with red ink, which he applied with the tip of the brush, as is visible in his retouched copy after Raphael, The Prophets David and Daniel (cat. no. 114). He retouched pen drawings with the tip of the brush and dark brown ink after he had cleared the specific area with cream or grayish white body color. Retouchings where body color is involved—Rubens did not restrict its use to pen drawings but also employed it on drawings in red or black chalk—are generally easier to detect, because they are often more extensive, as we see in God the Father (cat. no. 115) and Fashionable Young Woman Holding a Shield (cat. no. 117).

Rubens was not one of those artists or collectors who retouched old master drawings in order to make them look nicer, so that they either would be more salable or would more closely reflect the taste of the time. He never sold his drawings—on the contrary, he kept them until his death and even made a provision in his will that they stay together, within his family, for an allotted time. In addition, Rubens never shared his drawings with friends or like-minded connoisseurs but, rather, considered them material for his private use. What, then, was his reason for retouching so many drawings by other artists? Rubens himself never gave an answer. However, Roger de Piles (1635–1709), the early biographer of the artist, probably got it right when he wrote that Rubens retouched drawings in order to "stimulate his senses and to heat up his genius."54 In other words, this work was a challenge to his creative spirit and inventiveness.

We do not know when Rubens began to retouch drawings. It is logical to assume that he acquired most of his Italian drawings during his eight years in Italy, but did he also start to retouch them there? And if so, how often and how many? One may wonder whether he spent much time on this in Italy when he could visit the original works of art. As a young artist from the North, he might at first have hesitated to interfere in works by (or attributed to) Leonardo, Raphael, and Giulio Romano. We will probably never know the exact course of events. However, it seems likely that the bolder the intervention, the later in life he did the reworking. A rare case where we can date the retouching reasonably well is the drawing of about 1633–35 after the right portion of Rubens's Garden of Love painting (cat. no. 94)—where Rubens intervened in his own work. On this sheet Rubens drew an initial design in black chalk; Christoffel Jegher went over it in pen and brown ink; and after the drawing had served its purpose as the design for Jegher's woodcut, Rubens retouched it with brush and ink and gouache and altered the initial composition, probably on the spur of the moment.

Since Rubens's retouchings are often difficult to discern, so cleverly did he apply them, there has been some discussion where the original drawings end and his retouchings begin. To show the difference between a copy entirely by Rubens and a drawing he only retouched, it may be fruitful to compare Rubens's Nude Youth Turning to the Right (fig. 11),55 which he copied after an ignudo in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, with a drawing in red chalk that Rubens retouched, Three Nude Women Holding Garlands (fig. 12), by an artist from the circle of Francesco Primaticcio (1504/5–1570).56 The Nude Youth is one of the rare drawings that everyone agrees is by Rubens's hand alone. For this sheet he used red chalk and did some work, likely at the same time,57 with the tip of the brush and red wash to delineate leaves in the wreath around the youth's head. The fine hatching to indicate the modeling of the muscles corresponds to that in Rubens's copies after antique sculpture. The drawing of Three Women also shows retouches with the tip of the brush and red ink, especially in the women's faces, in the contours of the arms and legs, and in the restructuring of the ram's head. However, some of these areas—for example, in the face of the caryatid at the left and the fruit garland next to her—were first covered with beige body color. The work with the tip of the brush was added on top of it. First covering the section to be reworked was Rubens's customary procedure when retouching a drawing by someone else. Nothing needed to be covered with opaque body color in the Nude Youth, since Rubens drew it from the beginning to his satisfaction.

When Rubens retouched a drawing he characteristically inserted the original sheet into a larger piece of paper (rather than enlarging it on each side, as with the Van Orley fragment) and extended missing details into the added margins. One of the most famous such drawings is the exceptionally large Fight for the Standard (fig. 13), which is often published, erroneously, as a copy by Rubens after Leonardo and which is usually dated between 1600 and 1608, when Rubens was in Italy.58 In fact, however, Rubens worked on top of an anonymous sixteenth-century copy after the central section of Leonardo's lost fresco of the Battle of Anghiari (commissioned about 1503 for the Sala del Gran Consiglio of the Palazzo della Signoria, Florence). After inserting the earlier sheet into a larger one, Rubens proceeded to rework the entire drawing with a brush and bluish green body color that at times changes to white. He completed the horse's tail at the right, the horse's hoof at the left, the footman's knee at the bottom left, and the horseman's fingers at top center left. The soldier's right arm and hand brandishing a sword at top center right and extending into the margin are entirely Rubens's invention. The dramatic result is that the two swords of the battling horsemen cross more or less in the center of the composition.59 Rubens reworked the drawing heavily, which suggests that it is the work not of a young but of a more mature artist. Rubens may have retouched the sheet only about 1615–16,60 when he began a series of hunting pictures for members of the court of the Southern Netherlands and thus became interested in depictions of fierce battles.

The Sketchbooks

Almost every drawing by Rubens was made with another work of art in mind. In contrast to Rembrandt, who made many drawings of religious subjects just to train his mind and who drew countless landscapes and scenes of daily life for relaxation, Rubens was always thinking ahead and already busy with the next step. Even in his sketchbooks or the drawings related to architecture—the works discussed below—we encounter the same purposefulness.

Rubens drew most of his studies on single sheets.61 Nevertheless, he also used sketchbooks—or bound together drawings in series—throughout his career. A sketchbook concerning costumes is today still essentially intact; others, on anatomy and an assortment of other topics, are known only through some loose sheets or copies. The 1678–79 inventory of Rubens's collaborator Erasmus II Quellinus (1607–1678) mentions two or three sketchbooks (or books with drawings) by the master. One of these was apparently devoted to architecture.62

Rubens's most discussed but least known sketchbook is the one that is now generally referred to as the Pocket Book. Unfortunately, it was lost in a fire in 1720.63 We know about it only from descriptions, partial transcriptions, and at least two, and possibly a few more, loose sheets.64 The first person to mention the Pocket Book was Giovanni Pietro Bellori, who wrote in 1672 in his Vite that he had seen "a book in his [Rubens's] hand, in which there were observations on optics, on symmetry, on proportions, on anatomy and on architecture, with an inquiry into the principal passions of the soul, and actions based on descriptions by Poets, with examples of the work of the painters. There are battles, shipwrecks, games, love scenes, and other passions and events, transcribed from some of the verses of Virgil and others, with images principally after Raphael and the Antique."65 From this description and from a comparable one by Roger de Piles, who owned the Pocket Book at least by 1699, it is clear how seriously the young Rubens took his profession and how deeply absorbed he was by classical antiquity, not only through studying antique works of art but also through reading ancient sources. (He wrote many of the texts in the Pocket Book in Latin.) Rubens seems to have been interested in the theory of "ut pictura poesis" (as is painting so is poetry; the phrase is derived from Horace's Ars poetica), and it may have been at the heart of the Pocket Book.66 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the relationship between painting and poetry was emphasized; Horace's phrase became the motto of art theorists who wished to elevate the status of painting to that of poetry and the liberal arts. While Rubens may have begun the Pocket Book in Flanders, before he left for Italy in the spring of 1600, he wrote the largest part of it during his years in Italy.67 A double-sided sheet with Studies for Hero and Leander on the recto and a Battle Scene between the Greeks and Amazons and Studies for Samson on the verso (cat. no. 10) may have survived from this fascinating, mysterious sketchbook.

Rubens's student Willem Panneels noted on several anatomical drawings he made that they were copies after Rubens's originals in the artist's "annotomibock" (anatomy book). The existence of a book by Rubens with anatomical drawings was confirmed in 1987 by the appearance on the London art market of eleven of Rubens's original drawings.68 Thanks to these examples, we know that the sketchbook included écorchés and flayed torsos, arms, and legs; there was also one anatomical drawing of a horse. We do not know where Rubens studied anatomy, however. He may have become interested in beginning an anatomy book after having examined notebooks on anatomy by Leonardo, which he likely saw in 1603, when he traveled to Spain at the behest of the Duke of Mantua; de Piles reports that Rubens was very taken by these drawings.69 Rubens may also have been familiar with a book by Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) on human anatomy, Opera Anatomica; a copy published in Basel in 1555 apparently was in the artist's library.70 Rubens probably used his Anatomy Book to instruct the pupils in his studio, possibly having them copy after his drawings as Panneels had done.71 One of the Rubens drawings sold in 1987, Anatomical Studies: A Left Forearm in Two Positions and a Right Forearm, is today in the Metropolitan Museum (cat. no. 16).

The only Rubens sketchbook whose contents have largely survived is the so-called Costume Book, today in the British Museum, London.72 The volume has not been preserved in its original makeup, however: it is in an eighteenth-century binding; some original sheets appear to have been lost, and some unrelated sheets appear to have been added. It contains approximately 250 studies of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century costumes and portraits of Flemish and Burgundian nobility, as well as depictions of hunting scenes, dancing couples, people with exotic hats, Turkish, Arabic, and Persian figures, and men in armor. Most of the folios are filled with numerous images, often tightly cramped on the page. Rubens copied the majority of these images from other artists' works, including the Mémoriaux of the Flemish artist Antonio de Succa (before 1567–1620), today in the Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels,73 costume manuals, and model books. At times Rubens transformed the stiff figures of his sources into lifelike human beings. For this reason, the images in the Costume Book were long thought to be studies that Rubens drew from life or directly from the tomb sculptures and similar monuments catalogued by De Succa and others.74

Rubens worked on the drawings in the Costume Book from about 1609 through 1612.75 He used a fine pen exclusively, sometimes adding a thin wash. The drawings are amazingly free of corrections. While the volume may have been used for instruction in his studio, its primary purpose was to serve as a visual repository of costumes that the artist could draw on for his paintings. The Costume Book was not compiled in preparation for a history of the counts of Flanders, as some were led to believe by an inscription in French on the first leaf of the book as it is currently bound.

Unfortunately, Rubens's sketchbook on architecture, mentioned in the 1678–79 inventory of Quellinus, has not been preserved. We know from several other sources, however, that Rubens had a serious interest in architecture. In Italy he purchased the plans and elevations of twelve Genoese villas and palaces built in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, which he later published (in 1622) under the title Palazzi di Genova, with seventy-two plates.76 In 1615 he purchased two different editions of Vitruvius's De architectura and the five then-published volumes of Sebastiano Serlio's influential Renaissance treatise on architecture.77 At about the same time he had an Italian-style palazzo added next to his Antwerp house, to serve as his studio, and also became deeply involved in the design of the new Jesuit church in Antwerp (now Saint Charles Borromeo), for which construction began in April 1615 and which was dedicated in September 1621. Three designs by him for facade decorations have been preserved on two sheets, Two Angels Blowing a Trumpet (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) and Cartouche Supported by Cherubs (British Museum, London).78 In addition to his designs of 1620 for painted ceiling decorations, Rubens submitted a design for the high altar of the church and collaborated on a drawing for the stucco ceiling decoration of the Mary Chapel, added in 1625; both studies are now in the Albertina, Vienna.79 Rubens emphasized the contours in these very finished drawings, to guide the craftsmen as they translated the designs into stone. In this feature the sheets resemble Rubens's 1620 drawing for a relief of the Birth of the Virgin (cat. no. 52).

Rubens's Development as a Draftsman

Early Training and Stay in Italy, 1591–1608

Rubens began his training as an artist in 1591, when he was fourteen years old. He studied first with the landscapist Tobias Verhaecht (1561–1631), from 1592 with Adam van Noort (1562–1641), a painter of religious scenes and portraits, and from about 1594 or 1595 with the learned Otto van Veen, the most authoritative of his three teachers and one of the most eminent artists in Antwerp at the time. The drawings by Rubens that have survived from this period are all copies, mostly after sixteenth-century book illustrations. As copying was part of an artist's training since the Middle Ages, this should not surprise us. Apprentices learned the trade by copying older masters.80

The earliest known drawings by Rubens—the copies he made after one of the most popular illustrated books of the sixteenth century, Hans Holbein the Younger's Dance of Death—probably date from a year or two before his apprenticeship with Verhaecht. The drawings are on the whole more or less standard exercises in the copying of prints (see figs. 2, 3). Within a few years, in Rubens's copies from about 1596–99 after Tobias Stimmer (see cat. no. 1), Jost Amman, the Petrarch Master (Hans Weiditz? [1500–1536]), Hendrick Goltzius, and again Hans Holbein, we encounter an artist who extracts individual figures and motifs from various sources and combines them in pattern-book style, selecting only motifs that he liked or wanted to add to his repertory. Later still, about 1598–99, in drawings after Goltzius (see cat. no. 2) and Johannes Stradanus (1523–1605),81 Rubens experimented with yet another method of copying: he took figures from different sources and combined them in new compositions. Most of these copies are done in pen and ink, in a style that stresses the outlines. Shading can be accomplished with washes, as in the Dance of Death drawings, but is usually achieved through hatchings, plain parallel hatchings, and elaborate layers of cross-hatching. Not surprisingly, one can trace most of these characteristics back to the prints Rubens copied. However, by adding a few lines here or leaving out a few there—not to mention his corrections in perspective—Rubens usually improved the composition and with it the impact of the image.

The earliest paintings attributed to Rubens reflect quite closely those of his teacher Van Veen. The same cannot be readily said of Rubens's earliest known drawings.82 At first glance Van Veen's elaborate oil sketches—the only drawings we know by him—seem to have nothing in common with Rubens's early drawings. However, the apprentice may have picked up more than is generally acknowledged. It is interesting to note that the complex layers of oil and gouache in Van Veen's grisailles hide pen-and-brown-ink outlines and hatchings that are not unlike those by the young Rubens.83 Rubens may also have become aware of the possible benefits of oil sketches in the working process during his time with Van Veen, though, admittedly, Rubens's oil sketches later in his career were usually done on panel.84 Another habit or technique Rubens may have taken up in Van Veen's studio is the rough initial composition sketch in pen and brown ink. As has been mentioned above (see the discussion under "Compositional Drawings"), Rubens usually began work on a complicated composition by hastily jotting down with pen and ink his very first ideas. Such "scribbles," often hardly legible, form a distinct category in his drawn oeuvre. Grisailles by Van Veen in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, and recently in the art trade indicate clearly that Rubens's teacher began his compositions with comparable illegible pen-and-ink scribbles. Finally, Van Veen and Rubens shared the habit of writing on their drawings.85

Why no initial studies by the young Rubens have survived is unknown. Like many beginners, he may have drawn on erasable drawing boards or small tablets (tafeletten).86 One can also speculate that, after his eight-year stay in Italy, which had a deep impact on his attitude toward art and, implicitly, on his drawing style, the artist was no longer interested in his first efforts and discarded them. It was logical for him to have kept his copies after Holbein, Stimmer, Goltzius, and others, as these were instructive; more important, these representations could prove useful later on, as inspiration and as visual documentation. Drawings after Amman or Stradanus, for instance, were worth keeping out of archaeological and antiquarian interest, while copies after Holbein and the Petrarch Master contained invaluable information about life in the sixteenth century. That Rubens indeed later used these sixteenth-century examples in his own works is clear from several borrowings.87 The total lack of early originals, however, remains somewhat discomforting, especially given the pivotal role his own drawings played in his studio in later years. Time and again, sometimes decades later, the artist returned to his earlier work.

In May 1600 Rubens traveled to Italy, where he stayed for eight years. He was in the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (r. 1587–1612), a cousin of Archduke Albert, governor of the Southern Netherlands. Rubens's position as court painter in Mantua afforded him many opportunities to travel—to Rome, Florence, Madrid, and Genoa, among other places. In some of these cities he painted large altarpieces for important churches. In Genoa Rubens created a new type of portrait: splendid depictions of aristocratic ladies in fashionable dresses against an open background. Especially after the consistent and rather uniform works of his early Antwerp years, the drawings from his Italian period show a bewildering array of subjects, techniques, and styles. This diversity can be explained by several factors. As a young, ambitious Northern artist transplanted in Italy, the cradle of the arts, Rubens must have been like a sponge absorbing new and different art treasures every day. Paper, of course, was the easiest material with which to take in this new world properly and document it. Pen and brown ink, however, might not always be the right medium for these wonders, and in Italy he encountered many more possibilities, including chalk, which was not commonly used in the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century. Finally, from 1598 Rubens was no longer a pupil but a proper master, whose horizon, naturally, was not limited to copies.

Of course Rubens did not forget everything he had learned in Antwerp, and certain "Italian" drawings, such as the Anointing of Christ (fig. 14)88 and the Descent from the Cross (cat. no. 9), have features in common with his early copies after prints. In these two drawings we encounter, just as in his copies after Holbein and Stimmer, pen and brown ink enlivened with hatchings and washes; the emphasis remains on the outlines. The greater freedom of line, particularly in the Descent from the Cross, and the strong chiaroscuro imparted by the brushwork are nonetheless remarkable. Especially in the Anointing, Rubens seems to have been concerned with the effect of light, exploring all variations from white (he left parts of the paper untouched) to almost unthinned dark brown. Many quotations from Italian art have been identified in the Anointing. The general composition, for example, is based on a print by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Franco (ca. 1498–1561).

During his stay in Italy Rubens tried color in his drawings, apparently for the first time. The most vibrant examples are two copies he made after frescoes by Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone (1482/83–1539) in the Chapel of the Annunciation in Treviso Cathedral: The Emperor Augustus and the Tibertine Sibyl (Musée du Louvre, Paris)89 and God the Father Supported by Angels (fig. 4).90 Both large sheets are executed with the brush and watercolor over an initial sketch in black chalk, with some red chalk reserved for areas of flesh. These painterly copies are far removed from the careful pen work after Goltzius that Rubens had done only a few years earlier, although the emphasis on the outline is still evident. Despite their energy, these sheets have some raw and awkward qualities and therefore should be dated shortly after Rubens's arrival in Italy.91

Red and black chalk also seem to have had great appeal for Rubens while he was in Italy. His eight large copies, in these two chalks, after Michelangelo's prophets and sibyls from the Sistine Chapel ceiling were probably made in 1601–2, during his first visit to Rome.92 Rubens drew the first sheets in the series entirely in black chalk and added the red chalk only as an afterthought.93 In the drawings we witness the growing confidence of the young Flemish artist and the increasing quality of his draftsmanship. The young draftsman, full of admiration for the great Italian master, wanted to have a grip on these venerable figures from one of Rome's most influential masterpieces. From the volume of the bodies to the pleats in the garments and to the musculature of arms and shoulders, nothing escapes his attention.

Rubens's red-chalk drawing A Nude Youth Turning to the Right, after one of Michelangelo's so-called ignudi, also from the Sistine Chapel ceiling (fig. 11), is a telling departure from the accurate copies of the prophets and sibyls. It probably dates from 1606, during the artist's second visit to Rome.94 Rubens considerably increased the musculature of the body, changing Michelangelo's languid figure into a tense and active bodybuilder. Was this alteration deliberate, and should we therefore interpret it as an example of Rubens's trying to surpass his admired predecessor?

All the copies after antique sculpture that Rubens made while he was in Italy (see cat. nos. 20, 21, 22, 23) were done in chalk, usually black chalk. (He used red chalk occasionally, as in his copy after the Belvedere Torso [cat. no. 34 verso].) He apparently also used black chalk for drawings after the model (as he continued to do after he returned to Antwerp). Unfortunately, however, we know of only two drawings after the model from Rubens's years in Italy: the Man Holding a Staff in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome,95 and Two Men Holding the Shaft of the Cross (fig. 16; see also cat. no. 30 verso), cut into three pieces at a later date but still readable. In Italy about 1600, chalk—black and red—was used throughout the peninsula, so Rubens could have picked up this nouveauté anywhere. However, the use of black chalk for large drawings of single figures from life, in poses needed for future works of art, was a particular practice in the school of the Carracci in Bologna and Rome. It is therefore logical to assume that Rubens adopted this method, unheard of in the Netherlands at the time, during his Italian travels. Moreover, Annibale Carracci was one of the few contemporary Italian artists Rubens seems to have admired.96

The lack of more drawings by Rubens from the human figure during this period—in preparation for his Baptism of Christ altarpiece for the church of Santissima Trinità in Mantua (see cat. no. 14) and for altarpieces in Rome and Genoa—is a reminder that we are dealing with an oeuvre that has come down to us in fragmentary form. Compositional drawings from these years are also lacking. For several important paintings that Rubens made in Italy—for instance, the altarpieces of the Transfiguration and Vincenzo Gonzaga and His Family Adoring the Holy Trinity (fig. 51), both for the church of Santissima Trinità in Mantua, or his Genoese Portrait of Giovan Carlo Doria on Horseback (Galleria Nazionale della Liguria a Palazzo Spinola, Genoa)— we have no compositional drawings. In addition, those that have survived—the Michelangelesque Baptism of Christ (cat. no. 14), the sketchy, Zuccaro-like Study for the Circumcision (cat. no. 17), and the Adoration of the Image of the Virgin and Child (cat. no. 18), for altarpieces in Mantua, Genoa, and Rome, respectively—exhibit significant differences in technique and state of execution. Some surviving compositional drawings from Rubens's Italian sojourn, such as the Battle of the Greeks and Amazons (cat. no. 12), do not relate to any known paintings by Rubens and were perhaps preliminary drawings for works that were never realized.

Antwerp, 1608–20

Rubens returned from Italy to Antwerp in early November 1608, and his fellow countrymen quickly recognized his talent. Before a year had passed, Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, the rulers of the Southern Netherlands, appointed him court painter. He had already received many prestigious commissions from private patrons and various groups in the city—for a painting for the Antwerp city hall and for two important altarpieces for the two largest churches in Antwerp—as well as offers to paint altarpieces for churches in nearby Mechelen (Malines), Brussels, and Ghent. From now on his workflow only increased, and from the early 1620s it also included many foreign commissions. To produce the commissioned canvases, which were often very large, and to engage in a range of other activities—designing title pages for books, commissioning engravers, publishing a book on architecture—Rubens created a large, well-organized studio, with pupils, assistants, and collaborators. The studio was in his own house in Antwerp, since his generous employers, Albert and Isabella, allowed him to live and work there instead of at the court in Brussels.

Although Rubens was never bound by fixed rules of procedure, in the first years after his return to Antwerp he developed a relatively strict approach to his paintings and, consequently, to some of his drawings, relying heavily on his studio. His method—largely an Italian one, which in all likelihood he learned in Italy—was basically as follows: he started by making quick compositional drawings, outlines jotted down in pen and brown ink, to visualize his initial ideas. These helped him to figure out the basic composition, which, in the next step, he put down in an oil sketch. This Rubens showed to his patrons, and if they approved, he started the actual painting. (From the 1620s on, he gave the oil sketch to his collaborators so that they could begin work on the painting.) The oil sketches, however, were not blueprints that needed only to be enlarged. Rather, in the next step—making specific drawings from life for the most important figures in the painting—Rubens generally came up with many adjustments, large and small. These drawings, for which models posed in the posture required in the painting, enabled Rubens not only to determine the exact bearing of the protagonists, along with the appropriate musculature, hairstyle, and lighting, but also to find the most telling facial expression. With these drawings after the model in hand, a collaborator, or Rubens himself, was able to finish the painting properly.

In his early years in Antwerp Rubens created a group of compositional drawings that stand out stylistically and technically. The artist first made a sketch with a fine pen and then added washes with a broad brush in a boisterous, almost wild way. Among this group are several sheets with subjects of particular physical or emotional violence, almost complementing the frenzied drawing style: Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (cat. no. 26 recto), Judith Killing Holofernes (cat. no. 27), and two images of Susanna (cat. nos. 25, 29 recto). Eventually, this way of drawing proved very influential for Rubens's younger assistant and collaborator Anthony van Dyck, practically becoming his hallmark. (Consequently, over the years a number of these sketches, including Salome and Judith Killing Holofernes, have been attributed, erroneously, to Van Dyck.) In time Rubens moved on to a slightly different style for his primo pensiero compositional drawings. The Studies for the Visitation (fig. 6) and the Presentation in the Temple (cat. no. 30 recto), both from 1611, are good examples. They seem to be drawn with even more haste, the lines are simpler, the forms are blocklike, and the washes are decreasing in importance. Among the characteristic "scribbles," or sketchy preliminary drawings, in which Rubens ceased to use the brush completely, are Diana with Nymphs Unloading Deer from a Donkey (cat. no. 32 recto) and the Virgin and Child Adored by Saints (cat. no. 34 recto).

Of Rubens's studies after the model from this period, the most impressive group is probably the four surviving sheets relating to the central panel of his enormous 1610–11 triptych, the Raising of the Cross (fig. 87), today in Antwerp Cathedral. The studies—one for the figure of Christ (cat. no. 37) and three for his executioners (fig. 15; cat. nos. 38, 39)97—show how well Rubens had studied Michelangelo and antique sculpture. Muscles are rendered with the utmost precision, and the three executioners exude an utterly convincing strength. Comparing these drawings to a drawing of male figures from Rubens's years in Italy, Two Men Holding the Shaft of the Cross (fig. 16; see also cat. no. 30 verso), we can see that the artist's style has changed significantly. While the earlier drawing shows insecurity in several repetitions of general, wavy outlines, as well as a lack of depth and little knowledge of anatomy, the Raising of the Cross drawings demonstrate a complete mastery of line (despite an obvious pentimento in cat. no. 31) and correct modeling of the figure. The clarity and sureness of line of these and comparable drawings, such as the Seated Male Youth (cat. no. 45) and the studies of a Tartar Huntsman (cat. no. 61) and a Blind Man with Outstretched Arms (cat. no. 64), were probably not solely the result of Rubens's looking at Italian examples and improving his skills, however. They were in all likelihood also a consequence of the secondary purpose of these sheets: Rubens's pupils used them while working on the final paintings, so the more legible the figure studies, the better.

1621–40

In the early 1620s Rubens apparently altered his working method drastically. Certain drawing types, including compositional drawings and figure studies, almost disappeared, while other types, and even other techniques, came to the fore. The compositional drawing was largely replaced by the oil sketch, whose numbers rose steeply.98 For the large cycle devoted to the life of Marie de Médicis (altogether, twenty-one lifesize paintings with complicated compositions full of figures), for instance, only two double-sided compositional drawings are known—and twenty-eight oil sketches.99 The most likely explanation for this change is that as an older, more experienced artist, Rubens no longer needed compositional drawings all the time, whereas oil sketches, which included color, became more and more vital: patrons had to see them for approval, of course, and perhaps more important, they were needed to get his assistants started. At this stage of Rubens's career, saving time was essential.

A good example of a compositional drawing from the 1620s is the study for The Majority of Louis XIII (Louvre, Paris), one of the rare works on paper in preparation for the Medici cycle.100 The composition is jotted down in quick, summary lines of pen and brown ink. For the lower part of the ship the artist needed only three lines; for the royal couple, the allegorical figures, and all the rigging, just a few more. The same economy can be observed in earlier drawings, such as the Martyrdom of Two Saints (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)101 and the Continence of Scipio (cat. no. 33). From the 1620s on, however, we have only such hasty compositional drawings. The Virgin and Child Adored by Saints (cat. no. 34 recto), preparatory to Rubens's 1628 altarpiece in the Antwerp church of Saint Augustine (fig. 77), also displays this cursoriness, and its seemingly haphazard arrangement of apparently unrelated groups of figures illustrates beautifully how Rubens's thinking and sketching went together. Comparable sketches in which we can observe the evolution of Rubens's thinking are the Centaurs Embracing (Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London)102 and Seventeen Studies of Dancing Peasants for a Kermis (cat. no. 103). Again, such thinking on the page can be seen earlier, in Three Sketches for Medea and Her Children of 1600–1604 (cat. no. 8 verso) and Studies for the Death of Dido (fig. 47), for example, but the style of the later examples is freer, the scale is larger, the lines are thinner, and the mind that is drawing seems as if in a trance.

The scarcity of drawings by Rubens after the model in the early 1620s is not so easily explained as the diminishing number of compositional drawings. In his many painted works of these years—the Medici cycle, the ceiling paintings for the Jesuit church (today Saint Charles Borromeo) in Antwerp, the series on the lives of Achilles and Constantine the Great, and many individual paintings—dozens and dozens of new figures appear, but we know of only one or two drawings after the model from this period.103 Were they lost as a group early on? Did Rubens not need any? It has been argued, for instance, that the paintings of the Medici cycle contain many quotations after classical sculptures.104 Perhaps Rubens was indeed able to come up with the figures he needed with the help of his large drawings collection, which was an inventory of almost every famous ancient statue. The Study of a Seated Woman Turned to the Right (cat. no. 109) is a rare late drawing by Rubens from the model. This sheet is exceptional, however, since it is drawn, unusually, mostly in red (rather than black) chalk; the sitter's attitude is so natural that one doubts there was any deliberate posing; and there is no picture for which it was the preparatory drawing. It is in a way comforting that from this later period we have only this one extraordinary study. It would be disconcerting if we had, on the contrary, only one "normal" model study, because that would imply that Rubens continued making drawings after the model as usual and that they were indeed lost early on.

Yet Rubens did not abandon drawings after the model altogether. A special group of nine figure studies from the early 1630s has been preserved (see cat. nos. 90, 91, 92); they are all related to one painting, today called the Garden of Love, but in Rubens's time known as Conversation à la mode (Conversation of Young Women). There is no evidence of such careful preparation by Rubens since his studies for the Raising of the Cross of 1610–11.105 The painting is something of a novelty, because it depicts the old medieval theme of the garden of love—in this case, especially of married love—but the clothes, the hairstyles, and the architecture of the garden pavilion are obviously seventeenth-century. One is inclined to think that Rubens felt the need to make figure studies precisely because he transplanted the scene to "modern times." It is as if Rubens the history painter wanted to get a grip on modern, à la mode clothing. The great attention to costume sets these drawings apart from Rubens's earlier drawings, in which the models rendered were almost nude and in which the right posture and the appropriate facial expression were of the essence. The trois crayons technique also distinguishes these drawings from the artist's earlier drawings after the model. Although Rubens had been using this technique more often in his later work, he usually reserved the red chalk for flesh parts; in the Garden of Love studies he also used it for textiles, as one can see in the dazzling red mantle in Young Man Descending Stairs (cat. no. 92). Stylistically, these sheets show a freedom and boldness unparalleled in Rubens's earlier drawings from the model. Although the sheets are more drapery studies than proper studies from the model, the artist did pay attention to the faces, and in the end there is a beautiful equilibrium between the features of the faces and those of the body. The mastery of the three chalks, a facility and daring of line, and a tenderness of human gesture and emotion make the studies for the Garden of Love truly magnificent.

While compositional drawings and drawings after the model significantly declined in the 1620s, one category in Rubens's drawn (and painted) oeuvre grew: portraits. During his years in Italy Rubens—young and looking for new clients—had painted several portraits, but once back in Antwerp he engaged less often in portraiture, which in the general hierarchy of painting was the lowest of the pictorial genres. From the 1620s, however, a steady stream of portraits left the artist's studio. Rubens at that time was an internationally acclaimed painter, and from 1621 he was also a highly esteemed diplomat, who had the run of the courts in London, Paris, and Madrid. Princes were eager to have their portraits painted by Rubens, and of course the diplomat could not refuse. The artist portrayed almost all the rulers of the aforementioned courts, including many members of their immediate family and people in their entourage (see cat. nos. 76, 77, 78, 79, and 80). At more or less the same time, Rubens started on a sequence of portraits of his own family (see cat. nos. 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, and 88).

The surviving drawings for Rubens's early portraits executed in Italy, as noted above (see the discussion under "Drawings for Portraits"), display an array of different techniques in a variety of media. Since from the 1620s on Rubens drew portraits mainly in chalk, a comparison of one of his early portrayals in chalk with a later portrait drawing may help us discern something of the artist's development in this genre. Juxtaposing the Portrait of Ferdinando Gonzaga of 1601–2 (fig. 17) with Nicolaas Rubens Wearing a Red Felt Cap of 1625–27 (cat. no. 85), one does not need to be a connoisseur to see how dramatically the artist's style changed, from careful and precise—many lines are repeated several times in the Gonzaga portrait—to confident and loose. The handling of the light, and consequently the depth, is definitely more convincing in the later drawing. Even the mise-en-page of Nicolaas's portrait seems more daring than that of Ferdinando's. One has to keep in mind, of course, that portraying one's own child is rather different from portraying a prince and the son of one's employer, which Ferdinando's father, the Duke of Mantua, was to Rubens in Italy. And it must be admitted that another drawing from the mid-1620s, for a more official portrait, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (cat. no. 77), is not as loosely drawn as the portrait of Nicolaas; still, it betrays the same accurate and confident way of drawing, lack of pentimenti, and attention to the play of light on the face. Furthermore, one detects an attempt at subtle psychological insight into the sitter. If Ferdinando is purely a physical presence, Nicolaas and Buckingham are persons with at least a hint of character—pouting lips for the boy and an assured attitude for the English nobleman.

It is in the compositional drawings, drawings from the model, and drawings for portraits that one can follow Rubens's stylistic development, because the artist continued to make these types of drawings throughout his career. Other drawing activities (retouching old master drawings, or overseeing the making of preparatory drawings for reproductive prints and correcting them) and types of drawings (landscapes, designs for book illustrations and title pages) at which Rubens excelled are less suitable for observing changes over time, because there may be too few works in a particular genre, because Rubens's contributions are not always entirely clear, or because he made the sheets within a relatively short period of time.

Recent Developments in the Connoisseurship of Rubens's Drawings

Julius Held published his two-volume Rubens: Selected Drawings in 1959, and a revised, enlarged edition in 1986. To a large extent it remains the standard work today. The brilliant introduction is still the best way to get acquainted with the master's drawings. Held's dating of the works, moreover, has proved to be correct time and again. Nonetheless, differences of opinion have inevitably arisen here and there, discoveries have been made, drawings have entered the public domain and at last can be properly examined, and certain drawings have been studied in more depth. These additions to and modifications of the existing scholarship have changed (and are still changing) our idea of Rubens as a draftsman. Without aiming to be exhaustive, we will address the more important findings and suggestions concerning Rubens's drawn oeuvre that have occurred during the last two decades.

One of the most exciting events for Rubens scholars was the appearance on the art market in 1987 of eleven previously unknown anatomical drawings by Rubens; a twelfth study came to light in 1999.106 Thanks to the cantoor copies by Rubens's pupil Willem Panneels, today in Copenhagen, we had been aware that Rubens kept a book of anatomical drawings; the "new" drawings confirmed the existence of his Anatomy Book and were in turn anchored in his oeuvre by the Copenhagen copies. The sheets are now scattered among various collections; some show complete male figures, singly or in small groups, while others are studies of arms and hands in often rather awkward arrangements (see cat. no. 16). The media—primarily pen and brown ink, but also black and red chalk—and technique recall those of Rubens's early drawings from his middle to later years in Italy, between about 1602 and 1608, making it likely that they originated during that time. In this respect, the newly found sheets confirm our picture of Rubens in Italy as a young artist who took his profession very seriously, dedicating himself to mastering proper figure drawing not only by copying Renaissance prototypes and classical sculptures but also by studying anatomy.

In 1999 the city of Antwerp purchased, on behalf of the Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Stedelijk Prentenkabinet, a small book with Rubens's earliest extant drawings, his copies after the Dance of Death woodcuts designed by Hans Holbein the Younger.107 With this acquisition a part of Rubens's drawn oeuvre was retrieved for the city where the artist spent most of his life (Rubens as a draftsman is not well represented in Belgian collections, as most of his drawings left the country early on). This interesting group of early drawings is now accessible publicly for the first time since its discovery in 1972. In 2000 they were the focus of an exhibition at the Rubenshuis. An excellent essay by Michael Kwakkelstein in the accompanying catalogue examines the role of copying prints in the training of artists during the Renaissance.108 Rubens's early training clearly followed established tradition.

Three heretofore unknown drawings by Rubens after two famous antique sculptures, one drawing of the Laocoön and two of the Centaur Tormented by Cupid (see cat. no. 20), were discovered in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, in 2000. All three are on large sheets of paper, drawn in black chalk only. In 2001 Uwe Westfehling, head of the Graphische Sammlung of the Cologne museum, published them, correctly, as works by Rubens.109 In execution the drawings are very close to the well-known group of Rubens's copies after antique statuary in the Ambrosiana, Milan, among which is another depiction of the Laocoön.110 Moreover, both drawings of the Centaur Tormented by Cupid correspond exactly to copies by Panneels in the Copenhagen cantoor. Together with a previously known drawing in Moscow with another view of the Centaur from the right (cat. no. 21), the two sheets support the often-stated claim that, when possible, Rubens preferred to make several drawings, from different angles, of a single sculpture.

Yet another Rubens drawing after an antique sculpture, a copy after the Belvedere Torso, was discovered on the verso of the Virgin and Child Adored by Saints (cat. no. 34) in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, when the Museum acquired the sheet in 2002. In execution the drawing resembles the anatomical study in red chalk of a Nude Male Figure Reaching up to the Right (private collection).111 The drawing is the only one known by Rubens showing the Belvedere Torso from the back (Rubens drew the sculpture at least once from the front).112 It offers additional evidence that Rubens was in the practice of making multiple drawings of the sculptures he copied. Of great interest is that in this drawing Rubens completed the Torso by adding a head with curly hair—to date, the most illuminating example of how Rubens went about "breathing life," as he put it, into marble sculpture (see the discussion above under "Rubens's Copies"). His use of red chalk—a rather unusual medium for the artist when copying sculpture—may have been prompted by his urge to give the Torso a more lifelike appearance.

Rubens's oeuvre lost four drawings after the antique when Arnout Balis reattributed them to Anthony van Dyck in 2001.113 Except for the Portrait Statue as Ceres (British Museum, London), which had been doubted earlier,114 the others—the Roman Couple in the Guise of Venus and Mars (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), the Togatus with Portrait Head of Nero (Institut Néerlandais, Paris), and the Greek Philosopher, also called the Arundel Homer (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin)—had been published as recently as 1994 as Rubens originals.115 While we do not entirely agree with the attribution of all four drawings to Van Dyck, we support their removal from Rubens's oeuvre. If we compare them to drawings after the antique that we consider securely attributed to Rubens, we see that the artist (or artists) drew the antique works in a detached way, making no effort to "breathe life" into them, as Rubens required of such drawings. Their removal clarifies our notion of Rubens's approach to copying after antique sculpture.

One of the important recent Rubens rediscoveries is the drawing of a Man on Horseback (cat. no. 13), officially presented to the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, in 1996. For almost seventy years this drawing was in a private collection and hardly accessible. The last to have properly studied it were the Viennese art historians Gustav Glück and Franz Martin Haberditzl, who included it in their 1928 catalogue of Rubens's drawings. The drawing is rather unusual, as it is drawn on an exceptionally large sheet—it is the largest Rubens drawing known—and in great detail with a fine pen. The drawing was extensively discussed by Thea Vignau-Wilberg in an article in 1998 and in a small book in 1999,116 and was shown in an exhibition at the Prado, Madrid (2001–2), organized by Alejandro Vergara.117 At the Prado the Munich drawing was shown next to Rubens's 1603 painting of the Duke of Lerma on Horseback (fig. 48) and another, much smaller drawing traditionally attributed to Rubens of a Man on Horseback (Louvre, Paris). Ultimately, it became clear that the Paris drawing, which until then had been considered the primary drawing for Rubens's equestrian portrait of Lerma, could not hold its own next to the Munich sheet, which exhibited all the characteristics of an early Rubens work made in preparation of the 1603 painting and not, as had been previously suggested, after the painting. The Munich sheet is now generally regarded as the modello that Rubens submitted to his patron the Duke of Lerma for approval. Opinions about the Paris drawing are still mixed; in our opinion, the smaller sheet is a ricordo, by someone close to Rubens, of the Lerma portrait prior to its completion (see cat. no. 13).

Two other portrait drawings, both of Genoese noblewomen and supposedly dating from Rubens's years in Italy, need to be mentioned briefly. One, in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, is well known; the other one, in a private collection, is unpublished.118 The New York drawing relates to Rubens's portrait of Brigida Spinola Doria (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), dated 1606; the second example records (rather than prepares) Rubens's portrait of Giovanna Spinola Pavese (?), in a private collection, as well as what is now believed to be a lesser version, in the Muzeul National de Arta al României, Bucharest.119 Stylistic similarities indicate that the drawings may be by the same artist—not Rubens, but perhaps a compatriot, since the notes concerning color on the New York drawing are in Flemish.120 In both drawings the entire composition, including the architecture, is depicted, which would be unusual for Rubens. Furthermore, the palazzo in the New York drawing is rendered incompletely and without definition, which gives the work the appearance of a copy. (Parts of the balustrade appear particularly inept.) The fine, fluidly drawn pen lines that one observes in Rubens's Man on Horseback drawing (cat. no. 13) are absent, and the washes do not indicate light and shade as they usually do in the master's drawings. It is also strange, for a Rubens drawing, that the annotations in Flemish concerning color are in the building rather than on the garments. It is tempting to attribute the two drawings to Deodaat del Monte (1582–1644), a pupil of Rubens who accompanied the artist to Italy, but he is unknown as a draftsman.121

We also question the attribution to Rubens of two other drawings likewise believed to date from the artist's Italian period: Saint Catherine (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Saints Gregory, Domitilla, Maurus, and Papianus (Musée Fabre, Montpellier); the latter was already doubted by Hans Vlieghe in 1973 and by David Freedberg in 1978.122 Both sheets, extensively washed, have been considered preparatory drawings for Rubens's altarpiece of 1606–8 for the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome. However, their technique and supposed function are fundamentally at odds with the master's drawn oeuvre as it is known today. We believe that when Rubens applies wash to a drawing it is always in direct interaction with the pen. Wash and pen are used to enhance the outlines of limbs and garments, thus creating solid figures and eventually introducing depth to a composition. In the Saint Catherine drawing in New York, however, there are very few pen strokes, and these are added at will and in a rather haphazard fashion. The Montpellier sheet may contain more pen work, but it is still basically a wash drawing and highly finished. It is more reminiscent of a record of an artwork than of a drawing in preparation for one.

Four of the above-mentioned drawings, the Louvre Man on Horseback, the Morgan Library Portrait of a Lady, Saint Catherine, and Saints Gregory, Domitilla, Maurus, and Papianus, figured prominently in Held's two editions of Rubens: Selected Drawings. It is therefore not surprising that their removal from Rubens's oeuvre has repercussions for our notion of Rubens's development during his stay in Italy between 1600 and 1608. The full-length Portrait of a Lady and Man on Horseback are now being "replaced," so to speak, by one highly finished and very refined drawing for a portrait, the Man on Horseback in Munich (cat. no. 13). The removal from Rubens's graphic oeuvre of the two wash drawings of Saint Catherine and Saints Gregory, Domitilla, Maurus, and Papianus leaves the more traditional sheets made in preparation for the altarpiece, like those in the British Museum, London; in the Musée Condé, Chantilly; and in the Albertina, Vienna (cat. no. 18).123 It seems, as a result of this rather drastic diminishment, that in his approach to creating a work of art the young Rubens was in some respects more methodical and conventional in style and technique than was previously thought.

In our opinion, two drawings from the late 1620s that figure prominently in Held's catalogues require a reassessment as well: Virgin and Child Adored by Saints in Stockholm (fig. 80) and Studies for Saint George and the Princess in Berlin.124 Both sheets were considered preparatory for paintings now in Antwerp (fig. 77) and London, respectively, but both are executed in a technique that is unusual for Rubens in drawings of this kind: an extensive underdrawing in black chalk, gone over with pen and brush and finished with a layer of wash in different shades of brown, results in (especially in the Stockholm sheet) a muddy, hard-to-read drawing without depth. (Already in 1959 Held considered the layer of wash in the Stockholm drawing "somewhat disturbing" and suggested that it "might have been added by a later hand.")125 Rubens's preliminary drawings for compositions were usually done with the pen only, sometimes enhanced with wash. The recently discovered Virgin and Child Adored by Saints in New York (cat. no. 34 recto), also for the painting in Antwerp, is a prime example. The New York drawing is completely different from the Stockholm and Berlin sheets: it has some areas that are difficult to read, but generally it is clean, and the forms are solid and well defined. In addition, on the verso of the Stockholm drawing we find individual studies, all in a different technique, something that is not found, so far as can be established, in Rubens's extant graphic oeuvre. These unusual features seem to support removing the Stockholm and Berlin drawings from the artist's oeuvre. In all likelihood, the Stockholm Virgin and Child Adored by Saints was drawn by an assistant who had access to an earlier stage of Rubens's preliminary work for the Antwerp altar. Our inability to suggest an artist as author of the drawings in Stockholm and Berlin underscores how relatively little we still know about the draftsmanship of some of Rubens's close associates.

The most startling recent development in the connoisseurship of Rubens's drawings came in 1999, when Martin Royalton-Kisch organized an exhibition at the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, and the British Museum, London, of landscape drawings and watercolors by Anthony van Dyck. Kisch included in his show three much admired landscape drawings that for more than a century had unanimously been thought to be by Rubens—and attributed them to the young Van Dyck. He dated them about 1618–20, when Van Dyck worked in Rubens's studio. The drawings are the Landscape with Fallen Tree (fig. 18), the Dying Tree, Covered with Brambles (fig. 19), and the Fallen Tree Lying by a Pool at Chatsworth.126 The key reason for Kisch's assigning these drawings to Van Dyck is the inscription on the Dying Tree, Covered with Brambles, which in Kisch's opinion is by Van Dyck.127 The inscription reads: "afgevallen bladeren / ende op sommighe plaetsen / schoon gruen gras doorkyken" (fallen leaves and in some places fresh green grass peep through).

In our opinion, Kisch's argument that the inscription is by Van Dyck and thus the drawing is most likely by him as well is not that solid. Although it bears a certain resemblance to Van Dyck's, the handwriting has a rather general character. Furthermore, the observations are similar to those we know from other landscape drawings by Rubens, such as Study of Blackthorn with Bramble and Other Plants (fig. 20) and Trees Reflected in Water at Sunset (cat. no. 104). Rubens wrote his comments in his Flemish script, which is difficult to decipher, and one might therefore ask whether such an inscription was originally found on the Dying Tree, Covered with Brambles as well but then transcribed in a humanist handwriting (possibly by Van Dyck) to make it more intelligible. One should also remember that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries annotations of all sorts were added to drawings. Dying Tree Covered with Brambles itself includes, along the right edge of the recto, another annotation in pen and brown ink in a different (unfortunately, illegible) seventeenth-century hand, which has not been discussed in the literature on the drawing. A translation into English of Rubens's Flemish inscription was added by another hand to Trees Reflected in Water at Sunset (cat. no. 104).

The stylistic comparison that Kisch makes between Landscape with Fallen Tree (fig. 18) and Van Dyck's elaborate study of the Taking of Christ in Hamburg128 is a stronger argument for reattributing the three landscape drawings to Van Dyck. The angular and hurried underdrawing in black chalk and the strong diagonal slant created in the more distant foliage in the Landscape drawing indeed call to mind the sheet in Hamburg. However, the elaborate technique of the Hamburg drawing is also exceptional for Van Dyck, and one could argue that the Landscape inspired the young assistant to make the drawing now in Hamburg, especially since one does find in other Rubens drawings a similar use of black chalk, for example, in A Man Threshing beside a Wagon, Farm Buildings Behind (cat. no. 98), also from about 1618, and Saint Gregory Nazianzenus (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge), from 1620.129

Two of the three nature studies Kisch attributed to Van Dyck are closely related to paintings by Rubens. The Landscape with Fallen Tree reappears in the Landscape with a Boar Hunt in Dresden, generally dated 1616–18, while the Fallen Tree Lying by a Pool is repeated in Ulysses and Nausicaa (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), painted in the first half of the 1630s.130 According to Kisch, the Dresden painting, in which the fallen tree is the focal point around which the boar hunt progresses, is largely by Van Dyck.131 Van Dyck was indeed indispensable to Rubens in the late 1610s, but did the pupil compose the master's paintings as well? It is perhaps not impossible, but it would be the only known example. Would Rubens have sold the painting in 1627 to as important a collector as George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, if Van Dyck had been the primary author? Kisch speculates that Rubens was able to use Fallen Tree Lying by a Pool for a painting dating from 1630–35—some fifteen years after the drawing was made—because the study was retained in his studio or because he had made a drawing of the same motif himself. Again, this may be possible, but it seems a bit of a stretch.

If Kisch is correct, the oeuvre of Van Dyck, who despite all the recent attention never was a true landscapist, would be enriched by a stunning group of three landscape drawings—two of them of a very large size, which is rather unusual for Van Dyck—that show a beauty and an eye for (literally low-to-the-ground) details that were not repeated in later works, at least not with such grandeur. Conversely, in the oeuvre of Rubens, who was a great landscapist with about forty painted landscapes, the three drawings fit easily with nature studies such as the very large sheet Study of Blackthorn with Bramble and Other Plants (fig. 20), which bears an inscription, definitely added by Rubens in his Flemish script, similar to that on Dying Tree, Covered with Brambles (fig. 19).132 The black-chalk technique and the function of some of the drawings as preparatory studies for paintings make them comparable to Rubens's drawings after the model. The addition to some of pen and brown ink does not really affect the argument. It seems to us better to keep the three drawings under the name of Rubens, though with a question mark. This puzzling matter deserves more discussion. Indeed, as we present this exhibition, twenty-five years after the last major exhibitions of Rubens's drawings took place, it is our hope that new scrutiny of Rubens's drawings and new scholarship will continue to deepen and refine our knowledge of Rubens as a draftsman.

Notes

Sources listed here may be referenced in the bibliography of the exhibition catalogue Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005).

1. Huvenne 1993, pp. 21–24.
2. For Rubens's testament, see Held 1986, p. 16.
3. Konrad Renger in Munich 1990–91, p. 87, doc. 3, and p. 97, doc. 36.
4. Quoted in Carmen C. Bambach, "Introduction to Leonardo and His Drawings," in New York 2003, p. 8.
5. Hans Lützelburger made the woodcuts after Holbein's designs. In 1999 the Museum Plantin-Moretus and Stedelijk Prentenkabinet, Antwerp, acquired the drawings by Rubens after Holbein's Dance of Death; they are now bound as a small book, in an eighteenth-century red morocco-leather binding. For Rubens's complete drawings after Holbein, see Antwerp 2000 and Lille 2004, no. 1.
6. See Belkin 2000, p. 96 and fig. 39 (color ill.).
7. Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, nos. 76–93, vol. 3, figs. 145–64 (Laocoön); vol. 2, nos. 14–24, vol. 3, figs. 31, 33–52 (Hercules Farnese); vol. 2, no. 71, vol. 3, fig. 136 (Farnese Bull).
8. Ibid., vol. 2, no. 1, vol. 3, fig. 3 (Apollo Belvedere); vol. 2, no. 3, vol. 3, fig. 7 (Seated Bacchus); vol. 2, nos. 25, 26, vol. 3, figs. 53, 55 (Hermes Belvedere); vol. 2, nos. 28, 29, vol. 3, figs. 58, 59, 61 (Silenus Leaning against a Tree Trunk).
9. See Jan Garff and Eva de la Fuente Pedersen in Copenhagen 1988; and Antwerp 1993, with contributions by various authors. For a discussion of the cantoor in Rubens's house, see Jeffrey M. Muller and Fiona Healy in Antwerp 2004b, pp. 59–62, 298–309.
10. Rubens met Goltzius only later, in 1612, when Rubens traveled to Haarlem; see Huigen Leeflang in Amsterdam–New York–Toledo 2003–4, p. 21 and p. 310, n. 68.
11. Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, no. 77, vol. 3, fig. 150 (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden), vol. 2, no. 81, vol. 3, fig. 153 (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan).
12. In his unpublished Latin treatise De Imitatione Statuarum (On the Copying of Sculpture) Rubens wrote: "I am convinced that in order to achieve the highest perfection [in art] one needs a full understanding of the statues, nay a complete absorption in them; but one must make judicious use of them and before all avoid the effect of stone. For many neophytes and even some experts do not distinguish stuff from form, stone from figure, nor the exigencies of the marble from its artistic use. . . .Whoever can make this distinction with wise discretion should indeed welcome the statues in a loving embrace." See Stechow 1968, p. 26, and Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 1, pp. 77–78.
13. See London 1977a, no. 14, ill.; Held 1986, no. 39, pl. 23.
14. See note 12 above.
15. See Helen Braham in London 1988 –89, p. 50, under nos. 58, 59. For the provenance and recent discussion of the sketchbook, see notes 63 and 64 below.
16. Bellori 1672 (1968 ed.), p. 301; M. Jaffé 1977, pp. 101–2.
17. Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, no. 168a, vol. 3, fig. 322, as Rubens; Lille 2004, no. 41, ill., as Rubens; Nico van Hout in Antwerp 2004c, p. 110, fig. 79, as anonymous, retouched by Rubens.
18. "Si ha da avertire che l'opra riuscerebbe molto diversa da questi scizzi, li quali sono fatti leggierissimamente da primo colpo per dimostrar solo il pensiero, mà poi si farebbono li dissegni come anco la pittura con ogni studio e diligenza." Lugt 1949, no. 1007, pl. XII; Paris 1978, no. 8, ill.; d'Hulst and Vandenven 1989, no. 39, fig. 87.
19. Held 1986, p. 28.
20. See Bauer and Bauer 1999, pp. 520–30. See Vasari 1568 (1906 ed.), vol. 5, p. 528, or vol. 1, pp. 174–77: "gli schizzi ... chiamiamo noi una prima sorte di disegni che si fanno per trovar il modo delle attitudini, ed il primo componimento dell'opra; e sono fatti in forma di una macchia, ed accennati solamente da noi in una sola bozza del tutto" (Sketches are in artists' language a sort of first drawing made to find out the manner of the pose, and the first composition of the work. They are made in the form of a blotch, and are put down by us only as a rough draft of the whole; English translation from Vasari 1907, p. 212). See also Held 1963a, pp. 86–87.
21. Held 1963a, p. 89, and Held 1986, p. 29.
22. Held 1986, no. 124, pl. 124.
23. J. R. Martin 1968, no. 19a, fig. 108 (Saint Athanasius), no. 25a, fig. 133 (Saint Gregory Nazianzenus). As Held (1986, p. 125, under no. 147) observed, the Saint Athanasius drawing is somewhat inferior in quality to the Saint Gregory sheet.
24. Held 1986, no. 156, pl. 151.
25. See Bauer and Bauer 1999, pp. 520, 526–29, and Joanna Woodall in London 2003–4a, pp. 9–10.
26. The different approaches in the Protestant Northern Netherlands and the Catholic Southern Netherlands to depicting the female nude are discussed in Volker Manuth, "'As stark naked as one could possibly be painted . . .': The Reputation of the Nude Female Model in the Age of Rembrandt," in Edinburgh–London 2001, pp. 47–53, and in Thøfner 2004, pp. 1–33.
27. "But Sir Peter Rubens told mee that at his being in Italy, divers of his nation had followed this Academicall course for twenty Yearses together to little or noe purpose. Besides these dull, tedious and heavy wayes doe ever presuppose Animam in digitis [literally, where the spirit rests in the fingers, i.e., where the skill of their fingers is primary, as in dry, mechanical drawings], a man whose soule hath taken up his Lodging in his fingers ends, and meanes to sacrifice his spirits and time for a Life and a day in this study onely." Norgate 1997, pp. 108, 209–10, n. 307.
28. 's-Hertogenbosch–Rome 1992–93, no. 20, ill. Rubens adapted the seated shepherd in the Fermo Adoration of the Shepherds (M. Jaffé 1989, no. 79, 1608) thirty years later in the Torre de la Parada series; see Alpers 1971, no. 40b, fig. 158, and no. 46b, fig. 157.
29. To reach their goal the Carracci established their own academy, the Accademia del Disegno or the Accademia del Naturale, later the Accademia degli Incamminati (see M. Jaffé 1977, pp. 54–56, and Held 1986, p. 66, under no. 7).
30. Annibale Carracci's study The Giant Cacus in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1972.118.244), was attributed to Rubens until 1956. See Bean 1979, no. 98, ill. Michael Jaffé (1956a, pp. 12–16) reattributed it to Annibale.
31. Rooses 1910, pp. 221–22. See also Arnout Balis, "'Fatto da un mio discepolo': Rubens's Studio Practices Reviewed," in Tokyo 1993, pp. 97–127.
32. See Baudouin 1992, pp. 78–85, figs. 58–60, and Vynckier 1992, pp. 159–61, figs. 135, 141.
33. Magurn 1955, p. 38, letter 12, November (?) 1603, sent by Rubens from Valladolid, Spain, to Annibale Chieppio, Vincenzo Gonzaga's secretary of state, in Mantua.
34. See Hervey 1921, p. 175, and Held 1986, pp. 32–33.
35. For the painting in Munich, see M. Jaffé 1989, no. 652, 1620; Renger and Denk 2002, pp. 272–75, no. 352.
36. Held 1986, no. 145, pl. 144.
37. M. Jaffé 1989, no. 879, 1626–27.
38. Held 1986, no. 200, pl. 191.
39. M. Jaffé 1989, no. 1400, ca. 1639.
40. For Rubens's possible involvement with etching, see Renger 1975, pp. 166–72, and Nico van Hout, "Rubens aquafortiste?" in Antwerp 2004c, pp. 70–75.
41. Judson and Van de Velde 1978, vol. 1, nos. 1–5, figs. 41–46; Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 1, pp. 97–113, text ills. 51, 54, 57, 59, 61.
42. In addition, Rubens designed thirteen title pages for books on politics and history, nine for books about archaeology and philology, and five for volumes of poetry and emblems. He designed only one title page for a scientific publication. See Held 1986, p. 37.
43. See Judson and Van de Velde 1978, vol. 1, pp. 43, 50.
44. For Moretus's letter to Cordier, see Judson and Van de Velde 1978, vol. 1, p. 27, vol. 2, p. 385, and Deborah-Irene Coy and Julius S. Held in Williamstown 1977, p. 34, no. 19. Moretus's aim was apparently to politely decline the commission, for Rubens could work much faster if need be. For example, on June 8, 1634, Moretus reported to Benedict van Haeften that he would ask Rubens to prepare a design for Van Haeften's Regia Via Crucis "with haste"; Rubens had it ready on August 16. See Held in Williamstown 1977, pp. 38–39, nos. 26–28.
45. For Rubens's payments, see Judson and Van de Velde 1978, vol. 1, p. 27. For Rubens's library, his interest in books, and his acceptance of books in exchange for his designs, see Antwerp 2004a.
46. Proof impressions of the title page and five illustrations for the Breviarium Romanum with Rubens's retouches are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Judson and Van de Velde 1978, vol. 2, figs. 82, 84, 91, 93, 96.
47. Magurn 1955, p. 400, letter 237, August 16, 1635.
48. Bellori 1672 (1976 ed.), pp. 13–14.
49. Carl Depauw in Antwerp–Amsterdam 1999–2000, nos. 1–3.
50. Broos 1989, pp. 34–55; Monbeig Goguel 1988, pp. 821–35.
51. In the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries—during the height of classicism—Rubens's retouched Italian drawing may have been admired even more than his own drawings. See the essay by Michiel C. Plomp in this publication.
52. Jeremy Wood in Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002. See also Wood 1994.
53. Hind 1923, no. 32, pl. V; London 1977a, no. 49, ill.; Antwerp 2004b, no. 88, color ill.
54. Piles 1677, p. 218. See also Held 1986, p. 48.
55. Held 1986, no. 22, pl. 22.
56. A. W. F. M. Meij, with Maartje de Haan, in Rotterdam 2001, no. 21, ill.
57. Jeremy Wood suggested that Rubens added the wash in the early 1630s (see Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002, no. 12).
58. For the Fight for the Standard, see Anne-Marie Logan in New York 2003, no. 135, ill.
59. Vasari's description of Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari, in which the crossed swords are mentioned, may have inspired Rubens. See Joannides 1988, p. 80.
60. Anne-Marie Logan in New York 2003, no. 135. Earlier, Karl Suter (1937, pp. 83–85, 1615) and Julius Held (1986, no. 49, ca. 1612–15) also suggested a later date.
61. Held 1986, p. 27.
62. For Quellinus's inventory, which was begun at his death on November 7, 1678, and continued in March 1679, see Duverger 1984–, vol. 10, p. 369: "Een teeckenboeck van Rubbens [drawing book of Rubens] / Een cleyn teeckenboecken van 71 bladeren met root crijt [a small drawing book of 71 pages, in red chalk (also by Rubens?)] / Noch een cleyn boecken van Rubbens met Architectuer" [another small book of Rubens, with architecture].
63. At the time of the fire, the Pocket Book was in the possession of André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732), cabinetmaker to the French court. Rubens's first son, Albert, did not inherit it after Rubens's death in 1640, as had been thought until recently. Rather, Rubens appears to have presented the book to the canon Antoon Tassis (d. May 11, 1651). It is likely that de Piles acquired the book through the Flemish art dealer Matthijs Musson, who was involved in the dispersal of the canon's estate. This probably happened in 1676, the year de Piles initiated his correspondence with Rubens's nephew, Philip. De Piles must have owned the Pocket Book by 1699, when he quoted from it in his Abrégé de la vie des peintres. See Balis 2001, pp. 11–40 (pp. 15–16 for the provenance).
64. For a recent discussion of the Pocket Book, see Balis 2001. (Balis is preparing the Pocket Book for publication in the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard series.) For a concordance of the various manuscripts with passages copied from the Pocket Book, see Laneyrie-Dagen 2003, app. 1, pp. 162–95.
65. "Vn libro di sua mano, in cui si contengono osseruationi di ottica, simmetria, proportioni, anatomia, architettura, & vna ricerca de' principali affetti, ed attioni cauati da descrittioni di Poeti, con le dimostrationi de' pittori. Vi sono battaglie, naufragi, giuochi, amori, & altri passioni e auuenimenti, trascritti alcuni versi di Virgilio, e d'altri, con rincontri principalmente di Rafaelle, e dell'antico." See Bellori 1672 (1968 ed.), pp. 300–301.
66. Held 1986, p. 66, under no. 7.
67. Held (ibid., p. 67, under no. 7) supposed that Rubens began the Pocket Book before leaving for Italy in 1600.
68. Sale cat., London, Christie's, July 6, 1987, lots 57–67, ills. (introductory text by Michael Jaffé). See also note 106 below.
69. Piles 1699, pp. 166–68.
70. The sale catalogue of the library of Albert Rubens, who had inherited his father's books, listed Vesalius's Opera Anatomica (Basel, 1555). See Arents 2001, p. 345.
71. Copenhagen 1988, nos. 84, 107, 162, 216, pls. 86, 109, 164, 218.
72. The Costume Book is published in Belkin 1980.
73. For the Mémoriaux, see Comblen-Sonkes and Van den Bergen-Pantens 1977.
74. Held 1951, pp. 286–91.
75. Belkin (in Antwerp 2000, p. 102) dates the Costume Book ca. 1610–13.
76. Rott 2002, p. 18. See also L. Bauer 1992, pp. 224–43.
77. Arents 2001, nos. 29, 30, 35.
78. For the two drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library, see Held 1986, nos. 125, 126, pls. 106, 107, and Stampfle 1991, nos. 308, 309, ill. For the drawing in the British Museum, see Held 1986, no. 127, pl. 125, ca. 1617–20.
79. Erwin Mitsch in Vienna 1977b, nos. 32, 34, ill.
80. For the tradition of copying prints, see Kwakkelstein 2000, pp. 35–62.
81. For his well-known drawing after Stradanus, showing two tuba players, Rubens used two different prints by Adriaen Collaert (1560–1618) after compositions by Stradanus. This drawing, now in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Rotterdam 2001, no. 3, ill.), is the only sheet that can be related to an early painting by Rubens (and Jan Brueghel the Elder), the Battle of the Amazons in Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam (see M. Jaffé 1989, no. 7, ca. 1598).
82. The Portrait of Archduke Albert of Austria as a Cardinal in the Albertina, Vienna, was for a long time considered to be a possible collaboration between Van Veen and the young Rubens. The latter was supposed to have drawn the border (see Vienna 1977b, no. 1, ill.). We agree with Held (1980, p. 527, n. 7), who attributed the entire sheet to Van Veen.
83. For instance, Van Veen's designs for illustrations to the Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, clearly show pen-and-brown-ink outlines and hatchings (see Stampfle 1991, nos. 113–215, ill.).
84. The idea that Rubens may have been influenced by Van Veen to make oil sketches is Held's (1980, p. 8). For oil sketches by Van Veen, see Foucart 1985, p. 101; Starcky 1988, nos. 181–90, ill.; Stampfle 1991, nos. 113–215, ill. pp. 65–99; and sale cat., London, Christie's, July 6, 2004, nos. 161, 162 (colored oil sketches).
85. For Van Veen's grisailles with underlying scribbles, see Lassalle 1972, pp. 280–81 (Rouen), and sale cat., Paris, Tajan and Hôtel Drouot, July 4, 2002, lots 26–29, 32, ill. Several of these grisailles bear Latin inscriptions, in pen and brown ink.
86. This possibility is suggested in Kwakkelstein 2000, p. 37 (with bibl.).
87. Belkin 2000, pp. 98, 105–6.
88. Held 1986, no. 12, pl. 13; Luijten in New York–Fort Worth–Cleveland 1990–91, no. 43, ill.; Rotterdam 2001, no. 8, ill.
89. Lugt 1949, no. 1065, pl. XLIII; Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002, no. 46, color ill. p. 26.
90. London 2003–4a, pl. 8.
91. Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002, p. 67, under no. 46.
92. For Rubens's copies after Michelangelo's prophets and sibyls from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, see Lugt 1949, nos. 1040–47, pls. XXXVI–XXXIX; Paris 1978, nos. 83–90, ills.; Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002, nos. 9, 10, ill.
93. Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002, p. 26.
94. Jeremy Wood (in ibid., 2002, no. 12) also dates Rubens's Nude Youth Turning to the Right to 1606, although he suggests that the artist added the red wash in the early 1630s. Held (1986, no. 22), however, dates the sheet 1601–5.
95. For the drawing in Rome, see note 28 above.
96. Edinburgh–Nottingham 2002, p. 19.
97. For the Study of a Nude Man, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, see Held 1986, p. 91, under no. 55; Judson 2000, no. 20h, fig. 72; Rotterdam 2001, p. 108, under no. 18, fig. 1.
98. The practice of preparing paintings with painted sketches in oil probably developed largely in Italy. Rubens's teacher Van Veen was in all likelihood one of the first Northern artists who made many oil sketches and grisailles (see Held 1980, pp. 7–8; for Van Veen's oil sketches, see notes 83–85 above).
99. For the compositional drawings for the Medici cycle, see Held 1986, nos. 158, 159, 160, pls. 157–59; for the oil sketches, see Held 1980, nos. 52–79, pls. 53–81, colorpl. 10.
100. Held 1986, no. 159, pl. 157.
101. Ibid., no. 99, pl. 100, and Rotterdam 2001, no. 16, ill.
102. Held 1986, no. 184, pl. 179.
103. The dating of the drawing after the model Study for Mercury Descending (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) to the early 1620s, to which Held (1986, no. 157, pl. 153) adhered, is not certain, however. Van Gelder (1978, p. 457) established that a watermark in the London drawing is datable to 1614. He also pointed out that the study was used in Rubens's painting of the Four Evangelists (Bildergalerie, Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam; M. Jaffé 1989, no. 259, ca. 1614).
104. Held 1986, p. 57.
105. It is not known if the Garden of Love drawings from the model were preceded by the usual oil sketch. Rubens seems to have made the painting for himself. This circumstance perhaps diminished the need for an oil sketch, since there was no patron to whom he was required to submit it for approval. For more on the creation of the Garden of Love painting and its preliminary drawings, see cat. nos. 90, 91, 92, 93.
106. Sale cat., London, Christie's, July 6, 1987, lots 57–67 (see also note 68 above). For the twelfth anatomical drawing by Rubens, see sale cat., London, Christie's, July 6, 1999, lot 223 (ex coll. Ludwig Burchard).
107. See note 5 above.
108. Kwakkelstein 2000, pp. 35–62.
109. Westfehling 2001, pp. 200–222.
110. See Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, nos. 76, 81, 91–93, vol. 3, figs. 145, 153, 163, 164.
111. Holm Bevers in Berlin and other cities 1999–2000, no. 40, color ill., ca. 1605–10.
112. Rubens's frontal view of the Torso is preserved in the Rubenshuis, Antwerp (Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, no. 37, vol. 3, fig. 75, and Lille 2004, no. 17, ill.). Two additional views of the Torso from the front (probably after a replica or cast rather than the statue) are known in the cantoor copies in Copenhagen (Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, no. 38, copy 1, 2, vol. 3, figs. 78, 79).
113. Arnout Balis, "Van Dyck's Drawings after the Antique," in Vlieghe 2001, pp. 29–42.
114. Van der Meulen 1994, vol. 2, no. 62, vol. 3, fig. 119, as Rubens (?).
115. Ibid., vol. 2, no. 50, vol. 3, fig. 93 (Greek Philosopher); vol. 2, no. 51, vol. 3, fig. 95 (Togatus); vol. 2, no. 99, vol. 3, fig. 175 (Venus and Mars).
116. Vignau-Wilberg 1998, pp. 275–87; Vignau-Wilberg 1999.
117. For the catalogue of the exhibition, see Madrid 2001–2.
118. For the Morgan Library drawing, in pen and brown ink, see Held 1986, no. 29, pl. 32, and Stampfle 1991, no. 298, ill. The drawing in a private collection is executed in black chalk, pen and brush and brown ink and brown wash; it measures 287 x 180 mm. We thank Nicolas Schwed, Christie's, Paris, for making the drawing available for study.
119. For the Washington painting, see M. Jaffé 1989, no. 56. For the Bucharest painting (oil on canvas, 247 x 147 cm), see Piero Boccardo in Genoa 1997, no. 22, ill. (not in M. Jaffé 1989). Another, closely related, version of the latter painting, also possibly representing Giovanna Spinola Pavese, has become known. However, the sitter is slightly older (Piero Boccardo and Anna Orlando in Genoa 2004, no. 120, ill.).
120. Jeremy Wood informs us that he no longer believes that the New York drawing may be a copy by Van Dyck after the Washington painting. He maintains his doubts about its attribution to Rubens, however (Wood 1980, p. 19, and e-mail of April 2004). Kerry Downes also suggested that the New York drawing might be a copy by Van Dyck, drawn about 1621, after the painting (see Downes 1980, p. 46, pl. 22). Both Wood and Downes objected to the poor rendering of the architecture, and Wood questioned the color notes. Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, too, questions the attribution of the New York drawing to Rubens (oral communication).
121. Strangely, none of Rubens's preliminary drawings or oil sketches for his Genoese portraits seems to have survived. Even if his Genoese patrons kept them, that does not explain their disappearance. Piero Boccardo, director of the Galleria di Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, has never encountered such works during his extensive explorations of the Genoese archives. Only in the collection of Marcello IV Durazzo (1821–1904), who gave his collection to the city of Genoa in 1848, was there one drawing of a female figure attributed to Rubens; this drawing was stolen before the end of the nineteenth century, however, leaving no trace (Piero Boccardo, letter, April 8, 2004).
122. Held 1986, no. 32, pl. 33 (Saint Catherine), and no. 33, pl. 39 (Saints Gregory, Domitilla, Maurus, and Papianus). For the disattribution of Saints Gregory, Domitilla, Maurus, and Papianus, see Vlieghe 1973, p. 57, under no. 109f; Freedberg 1978, p. 90, n. 19; Logan 1987, p. 69.
123. London 1977a, no. 30a, ill. (Saints Domitilla, Nereus, and Achilleus, British Museum); Held 1986, no. 41, pl. 40 (Saints Gregory, Maurus, and Papianus, Musée Condé).
124. Held 1986, no. 171, pl. 169 (Virgin and Child Adored by Saints), and no. 177, pl. 171 (Studies for Saint George and the Princess). For Saint George, see also Lille 2004, no. 110.
125. Held 1959, no. 53, and Held 1986, no. 171.
126. Landscape with Fallen Tree: Held 1986, no. 115, pl. 113, ca. 1617–19. Dying Tree, Covered with Brambles: Held 1986, no. 116, pl. 116, ca. 1618–20; M. Jaffé 2002, vol. 1, no. 1157. Fallen Tree Lying by a Pool: Held 1986, no. 117, pl. 117, ca. 1617–19; M. Jaffé 2002, vol. 1, no. 1156.
127. Martin Royalton-Kisch in Antwerp–London 1999a, pp. 13–21, and nos. 1 (with inscription), 2, 3, ill. The attribution of the drawings to Van Dyck is supported by Jaco Rutgers (1999, p. 58). Carl Depauw (in Antwerp–Amsterdam 1999–2000, p. 63, fig. 3) illustrates the Chatsworth Dying Tree, Covered with Brambles as a work by Van Dyck, as does Nicolas Barker in the most recent catalogue of works from Chatsworth (Memphis and other cities 2003–5, no. 66, ill., ca. 1615–20. Renger (in Essen 2003, pp. 332, 333, fig. 6) accepts the attribution to Van Dyck of the Landscape with Fallen Tree.
128. Kisch in Antwerp–London 1999a, p. 18, fig. 11.
129. Held 1986, no. 147, pl. 146.
130. For the Dresden painting, see Adler 1982, no. 18, fig. 53, and M. Jaffé 1989, no. 401. For the Florence painting, see K.d.K., ed. Oldenbourg 1921, no. 354, 1630–35, and M. Jaffé 1989, no. 1063, 1630–35.
131. Kisch in Antwerp–London 1999a, pp. 13–14.
132. Willow Tree: Held 1986, no. 119, pl. 120. Study of Blackthorn with Bramble and Other Plants: Adler 1982, no. 71, fig. 157, before 1620; London 1988–89, no. 37, ill. In his inscription on the study Rubens observes that "the leaves [are] bright green shimmering but at the back a bit pale and dull," or "the backs of the leaves [are] lighter."

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