MUSEUM PLANTIN-MORETUS | ‘From scribble to cartoon, drawings from Bruegel to Rubens’

A bit very late to this party, I’m afraid. Until Sunday 18 February 2024, you can visit the temporary exhibition ‘From scribble to cartoon, drawings from Bruegel to Rubens‘ at Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp.

In this ‘Van crabbelinge tot carton, tekeningen van Bruegel tot Rubens‘ exhibition, the Museum Plantin-Moretus shows the 100 most beautiful old master drawings from Flemish collections. ‘From scribble to cartoon, drawings from Bruegel to Rubens’ gives an extensive and representative overview of the art of drawing in our regions in the 16th and 17th centuries, the website says.

The Flemish masterpiece list

In 2020, the Flemish government placed a large number of old master drawings on their masterpiece list, including rare artworks by Frans Floris, Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Jacques (Jacob) Jordaens, Otto van Veen, Jan Fijt and many more. The majority of these masterpieces are kept in the Museum Plantin-Moretus. The museum takes the official recognition of these drawings as masterpieces as an opportunity to put its unique collection in the spotlight. The exhibition presents an overview that illustrates who, why and how people drew in our regions in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The making of art

The exhibition challenges the visitor to look beyond a drawing’s subject and composition to consider how and why it was created and why an artist chose specific materials, techniques, formats and even sizes. It provides a framework to allow visitors to see drawings in the functional context for which they were created.

At the same time, the exhibition ‘Rare and Indispensable‘ at the Museum At the Stream (Museum Aan de Stroom, MAS), which runs until 25 February, presents a completely different dimension to the Flemish masterpiece list. Famous paintings by names such as René Magritte, Francis Bacon, James Ensor, sculptures, precious silver, mediaeval manuscripts and rare furniture can all be admired there. Works of art you would otherwise have to travel all over Flanders to see, or which were never even publicly accessible, can now be temporarily admired in one museum hall.

International recognition

The Getty Foundation recently selected the exhibition for the grant The Paper Project: Prints and Drawings Curatorship in the 21st Century. This international programme supports young curators of prints and drawings in their professional development and in building expertise in art on paper. The grant, worth 81,000 euros, will enable Virginie D’haene, curator of old prints and drawings of the Museum Plantin-Moretus and the curator of this exhibition, to conduct research on drawings worldwide and to accompany the upcoming exhibition with a scientific publication.