Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard XXVI (1)
Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artist: German and Netherlandish artists
Kristin Belkin
Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-905375-38-7
2 vol., 475 p., ill.
Rubens after German and Netherlandish artists
This two-volume book in the series Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard shows how the young Rubens copied work from German and Netherlandish artists. Drawing after Old Masters was an essential part of an artist’s training. In the process of copying, Rubens was also building up a kind of database on which he continued to draw throughout his life. In later years he would rework drawings and paintings by his predecessors and fashion them after his own style.
So Rubens studied the artistic tradition of his own region as well as antique and Italian art. As an apprentice he copied prints from German illustrated books, such as Hans Holbein the Younger’s Danse Macabre, the Bible of Tobias Stimmer (1576), an edition of Flavius Josephus published by Jost Amman (1569), and the immensely popular edition of Petrarch with woodcuts attributed to Hans Weiditz (1532). He also made drawings after prints by Hendrick Goltzius (1596-1597) and Johannes Stradanus (1589).
In later years, Rubens occasionally copied works by his own contemporaries or predecessors, but as in the case of the Italian masters, he preferred to collect works in the form of drawings that he would then retouch. Thus, he reworked drawings by German masters such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Hans Süss von Kulmbach, and a number of artists of the Dürer school. He also retouched drawings by Netherlandish masters such as Cornelis Bos, Bernard van Orley, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Michiel Coxcie, Maarten van Heemskerck, and numerous anonymous artists. In addition, Rubens painted copies after works by masters from the Northern Netherlands, such as Hans Holbein, Quinten Metsys, Willem Key, Joos van Cleve, Jan Vermeyen, and Adam Elsheimer.
Although there are no known copies by Rubens after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, his later landscapes and genre scenes in particular reveal how greatly he was influenced by his Flemish predecessor.