Previous Posts: November 2024

The aim of the exhibition is to reveal those talented draughtsmen whose artistic innovations were at the core of the Italian Renaissance. Pisanello, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Veronese, Correggio... Thanks to recent research carried out at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in collaboration with international experts and the Fondation Custodia, a number of important discoveries have been made regarding the drawings and some have been re-attributed to leading artists including Pontormo, Federico Zuccari, Aurelio Lomi and Pellegrino Tibaldi.

Drawings made by some of the early fifteenth-century precursors of the Italian Renaissance, today of the greatest rarity, are one of the salient features of the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Several studies by Pisanello, Parri Spinelli and Benozzo Gozzoli open the exhibition in an impressive way. From then on, the pre-eminent centres of Florence and Venice take over. These were the principal hubs of artistic creation at the time and indeed dominate the Rotterdam collection. The museum is famous for its exceptional collection of 400 drawings by the Florentine painter Fra Bartolommeo, thirteen of which are presented in Paris. Venice is not far behind and the exhibition contains work by its greatest representatives: Vittore Carpaccio, Gentile Bellini, Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto and their workshops, as well as that of the Bassano family.

A spectacular group of some 50 Flemish, Dutch, Early Netherlandish, and German drawings and watercolours, spanning from about 1500 to 1700, will be exhibited in Scotland for the first time. They have been selected from the collection of drawings at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, home to the Devonshire family, one of the finest and most significant holdings of drawings anywhere in the world. This exhibition is exclusive to the National Galleries of Scotland and will not travel elsewhere. Look forward to stunning drawings by, among others, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, and Sir Peter Paul Rubens, alongside no less than eleven works by Anthony van Dyck, and nine by Rembrandt.

How has humanity given form to spiritual beliefs across time and cultures? Living with the Gods: Art, Beliefs, and Peoples explores that quest in an expansive exhibition featuring more than 200 objects from the past 4,000 years.

As a capstone for the Museum’s centennial year, British art historian and former museum director Neil MacGregor was invited to revisit his 2017 BBC radio series and book of the same title, bringing that vision to the MFAH collections, along with many exceptional loans from museums and private collections.

Displayed in dialogue across a suite of 11 galleries, masterpieces in the installation explore elemental themes: the cosmos, light, water, and fire; the mysteries of life and death; the divine word; and pilgrimage. Living with the Gods includes ancient, historic, and contemporary works drawn from regions across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas. 

The magnificent work, which has been in the UK for about two centuries, was sold to an overseas buyer and was at risk of leaving the country.  Due to the work’s value and importance to the nation, the Reviewing Committee on the Exports of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, which is supported by the Arts Council, recommended that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport put a temporary export license stop - known as a deferral - on the work. In January 2024, the export deferral was announced, allowing the Ashmolean nine months to express interest in acquiring the work and raise the necessary funds to keep the painting in the UK. [...]

There are very few paintings by Fra Angelico in British public collections – a fact noted by the Reviewing Committee when considering their recommendation. Outside of London, it is only the Ashmolean that is fortunate enough to preserve a work by the master and his studio in its collection. This work, a hinged triptych that depicts the Virgin and Child with angels and a Dominican saint flanked by Saints Peter and Paul, is currently on display in the Museum’s gallery of Early Italian Art. The Crucifixion will soon hang alongside the later work, allowing visitors to appreciate both how the artist’s style developed over the course of his career and the extent to which his delicate, emotive approach was already established by the 1420s.

Portraiture, supposedly a sijd-wegh der consten, was paved into a central avenue of inquiry in Van der Stighelen’s work. Her approach to the genre made it into a pathway for the introduction of women artists. What was a sijd-wegh became a zij-weg. From seminal publications on Anna-Maria van Schurman to revelatory exhibitions on Michaelina Wautier, Van der Stighelen’s particular brand of feminism has impacted scholarship as deeply as it has touched the museum-going public.

Women and portraiture are the core themes of the essays assembled in this book. The resulting group portrait is crowded and rambunctious and reflects the varied subject matter that has attracted Van der Stighelen’s professional attention. It also paints a partial portrait of the community of scholars that she has so generously fostered. In trying to summarize the motivations of authors to contribute to this volume or the gratitude of generations of art historians trained by her, it is best to quote the title of the first exhibition on women artists in Belgium and The Netherlands, which Van der Stighelen curated in 1999: Elck zijn waerom.

Jan van Eyck (Netherlandish, c. 1390–1441) and workshop, Madonna of the Fountain, c. 1440, oil on panel. This rare panel is one of several period versions of one of Van Eyck’s last paintings, dated to 1439 and in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp.

Andrea della Robbia (Italian, 1435–1525/1528), Portrait of a Youth, c. 1470–1480, glazed terracotta. This exceptional work by Ieading Italian Renaissance sculptor della Robbia is modeled in deep relief, with the head and neck set off against a simple roundel glazed in blue, resulting in a sculpture that is remarkably lifelike and modern.

Jacopo da Pontormo (Italian, 1494–1557), Portrait of a Boy, c. 1535–40 or later, oil on fired tile. This sensitive, Mannerist depiction of an unknown boy, possibly a studio assistant, is rendered on the unusual support of a thick terracotta tile.

Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640) Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1613–1615, oil on panel. While the identity of the sitter is no longer known, this portrait—made following the artist’s return from Rome in what is arguably his most fertile period—is a superb example of Rubens’s ability to capture the subtleties of character. 

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, 1598–1680), Countess Matilda of Canossa, c. 1630–1639, bronze. This small-scale bronze figure is a reduction of the over life-size marble Bernini made for the tomb of Countess Matilda in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. The Tavitian gift also includes a rare painting by Bernini, thought to be a portrait of his brother Luigi. 

Hubert Robert (French, 1733–1808), Colonnade and Gardens at the Villa Medici, c. 1759, oil on canvas. The collection includes three landscapes by Hubert Robert, including this monumental plein air vista of gentlemen sketching on the grounds of the French Academy in Rome.

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Elizabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755–1842), Self-Portrait in Studio Costume (Pictured above), c. 1800, oil on panel. Several works by women artists are included in the collection, including eighteenth-century portrait painter Vigée-Lebrun, who is represented by this confident self-portrait. 

The NMWA collects superb examples of Western art as part of our stated goal to form a collection that presents an overview of Western art history from the medieval period through mid 20th century. The newly acquired Lavinia Fontana painting is an important addition to the NMWA's growing collection of works by women artists.

Long overdue in the history of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, this volume foregrounds women as creators, patrons, buyers, and agents of change in the arts of the Low Countries. Venturing beyond the participation of ‘exceptional’ individuals, chapters investigate how women produced paintings, sculptures, scientific illustrations, and tapestries as well as their role in architectural patronage and personalized art collections. Teasing out a variety of socio-economic, legal, institutional, and art-theoretical dimensions of female agency, the volume highlights the role of visual culture in women’s lived experience and self-representation, asking to what extent women challenged, subverted, or confirmed societal norms in the Netherlands.

‘Une pièce fort singulière’: the rediscovery of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s ‘Andromeda and the sea monster’ - By Maichol Clemente

Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna: its patron, material and meaning - By Paula Nuttall

Fragments of a Ferrarese sketch by Donatello - By Marco Scansani

The foundation of the Society of Female Artists - By Amy Lim

Collecting modern Italian sculpture in Britain: Charles Meek and Medardo Rosso - By Sharon Hecker

Steven Brindle, Architecture in Britain and Ireland 1530-1830 (Paul Mellon Centre)

Alicia Foster, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris (Thames & Hudson)

Laura Freeman, Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle’s Yard Artists (Penguin, Jonathan Cape)

Alun Graves, Studio Ceramics (Thames & Hudson / V&A)

Tom Young, Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c.1813-58 (Paul Mellon Centre)